Turkish girl, 16, 'buried alive by her father because she had friendships with boys'

This is horrific:

A 16-year-old Turkish girl died after being buried alive under a chicken coop by relatives because she talked to boys.
The body of Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied in a 6ft hole dug in the courtyard of her family's home in Kahta, south-eastern Turkey, 40 days after she had been reported missing. The hole had been cemented over.

The teenager had a large amount of soil in her lungs and stomach - showing she suffered a slow and agonising death.
'The post mortem result is blood-curdling. According to our findings, the girl – who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood – was alive and fully conscious when she was buried,' said a forensics expert.

This extraordinarily cruel manner of death was plotted out basically by her whole family. Because, you know, if they didn't bury her alive under a chicken coop--who knows what kind of trouble she'd have gotten into?

Or rather, these murderous, bloody-minded people decided to kill a family member in an astonishingly brutal way because they were afraid people would talk. Because really, it would be way worse for them to have people gossip about whether the daughter might have, uh, friends, than to have the whole world find out that they were the kind of people who could look at their own flesh and blood and demand not merely death, but suffering....because once again, what would the fucking neighbors think?

So she was put in a grave under a chicken coop, alive. Her last moments alive would have been unthinkably horrible as she tried to breathe, but couldn't quite, and knew she was dying, and was ultimately breathing in and eating dirt, all the while knowing her closest relations made this happen.

Because they were afraid that people would talk. And then, they'd have been dishonored. Oh, the insult! Oh, the tragedy of losing face!

I can't make any kind of cultural-relativistic defense for what happened here, because I can't grasp how this bullshit is ever justifiable.

This practice of honor killing is a practice of gutless cowards. There's no pride of lineage or reputation in overpowering a young girl and forcing her to die in tears, shame, feeling unloved and ultimately, panicked and terrified. Her lungs burned and were abraded by dirt under a chicken coop because the males in her family couldn't be bothered to possibly deal with a little gossip. Their poor little ears would have burned. How sad for them. How dare she have a life that inconvenienced them!

So--because they killed this girl in outright cowardice because, oh no, people would talk! I don't mind spreading the word that they experienced a sense of shame and utter lack of courage that outweighed the love they should have had for a family member. They punished her for the sin of potentially making their reputations momentarily, possibly suffer. What a total lack of manhood--they couldn't defend her for what basically amounts to doing nothing wrong? What weakness and vulnerability! Because it's so very easy to kill a defenseless girl. And so very hard to face up to people who might just be ignorant busybodies.

How can it be that killing a girl this way is "honorable"? It strikes me as being a disgrace and a far greater shame than anything she might have done.