Mosul, Iraq: The “caliphate” proclaimed by the Daesh radical Islamist group in Iraq has shattered the dreams of thousands of students who were unable to travel to Kirkuk to sit their exams.
The students, aged between six and 18, were from Mosul. They were warned that any person leaving the Daesh “caliphate” would be found guilty of apostasy, which is punishable by death.
Daesh has rewritten the school syllabus in Mosul to fit in with its strict interpretation of Sharia.
Ebrahim Mohammad Al Bayati, head of security in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, told the Efe news agency the radical Islamists had set up checkpoints to identify the students, forcing many to turn back.
“Parents begged the extremists deployed at checkpoints to allow their children to pass, but they refused and threatened to arrest those who disobeyed orders,” said high school student Mohammad Ahmad Salem.
Another student, Maisoon Bakr Mohammad said that Daesh had “shattered our dreams for the future”. The students have already lost a whole term as they struggled to study in the middle of the violence that preceded the fall of the city to the militants on June 10.
The Iraqi education ministry has announced it will allow students to sit their exams in any other province without the need to go to school.
The head of education in Nineveh, Sayedo Hussain, told Efe the Kurdish province of Dohuk had set up four schools for displaced students from Mosul, Anbar and Salaheddin provinces to complete their tests.
The move enabled more than 4,140 students in the elementary, middle and high school stages to pass the second phase of official exams on October 12.
