The killing of an American private school teacher by one of his students has prompted calls for the revision of program modules at the schools.

18-year-old Bayar Sarwar shot his gym teacher, Jeremiah Small, four times before committing suicide by shooting himself in the head on Thursday at the Christian Medes School in Sulaimaniyah.

The Kurdistan Teachers Union believes that the murder-suicide was motivated by religious reasons, indicating that the student was agitated by the school promoting Christianity.

The union wants the Ministry of Education to take action to prevent further incidents.

“The ministry of education needs to make a detailed and objective revision of the programs of the private schools in order to prevent the repetition any similar, unfavorable incidents” said Atta Ahmed, deputy secretary of the union.

“We have information which confirms that in some private schools in Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Duhok cities, a certain religion or sect is being promoted in a mainly Muslim country like Kurdistan," Ahmed said, referring to Christianity.

"This results in violent reactions from the students, like what happened in Sulaimaniyah.”

On Sunday, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Politburo member, Blessa Jabar Farman, told AKnews that she had to give up enrolling her child at the Medes School because she was told it was a missionary school where Christianity was taught to students.

However, Sulimaniyah's mayor, Zana Hama Saleh, was reported to have denied two days ago that the school was a missionary and said Sarwar "had no radical religious tendencies".

Kurdistan Regional Government’s Education Minister,Safeen Dezayee, told AKnews that it was too early to talk about revising the programs of study at the private schools.

"We are not going to do anything about it, we will wait for the findings of the police investigation," he said.

"We have to know what motivated the action.”




AKnews