Teenage girl buried alive in Turkey for talking to boys

Jesus fucking Christ.

Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.

Her father and grandfather have since been arrested and are due to face trial over her death. Her mother was also charged but has since been released.

Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.

Medine had first been reported missing 40 days earlier.

The informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.

Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.

A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried.

[…]

Although honour killings are not infrequent in Turkey, the especially gruesome manner of Medine's death has shocked the nation.

Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.

One just can’t find the words to describe something like this.

There is one thing I’d like to note, though. In reading this report and others like it, one thing that’s conspicuously absent is any mention of religion and any role it may have had to play in the making of such a horror. And yet, it’s simply impossible for anyone but the most naive or foolish to deny that religious thinking, and a culture based on the traditions of Islam, certainly contributed to (if it isn’t directly responsible for) such an act. What this comes to show is that you don’t necessarily have to be heavily religious to commit such inhumanity. Living in an area dominated by a culture that is, itself, heavily based on the teachings and mindset of Islam will do the trick just fine by itself. The parents and family may not have been religious fanatics or fundamentalists – the reports don’t mention it so we simply don’t know – but religion is still the primary factor that’s responsible for this act, one way or another.

(via @jennifurret)