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SUICIDE GRADUATES Harsh contrasts in Iran: While the critical student movement continues to struggle for free universities, a radical organisation recruits young men for suicide attacks    | Franziska Gerhardt (BERLIN). Suicide attacks against US troops in Iraq, against Israelis or preparation for an assassination of British author Salman Rushdie? — These were the options on the application form distributed to Iranian students who participated at a course of Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology in Tehran.    The seminar during which about 50 students signed up as potential suicide bombers was organised by the militant Iranian group Esteshadion (“Martyrdom Seekers”). The group has appeared in Iran about two years ago, spreading its recruitment forms in mosques at Friday prayers and in universities. The group’s spokesman Mohammad Ali Samadi claims to have recruited 20,000 volunteers, some of whom have already gone into action carrying out suicide operations against military targets in Israel. A student leader of the organisation spoke of 1000 trained suicide bombers, with another 5000 on the waiting list.    Israeli television broadcasted pictures from the lecture where the students were shown videos from the burning of a Danish flag and footage from the war in Iraq. On the stage of the auditorium was a sign in English, Hebrew and Persian reading: “Israel must be wiped off the map”.    Samadi told the Associated Press that his group had no ties with the government. However, the presence of a prominent Iranian lawmaker and a member of the country’s Revolutionary Guards at the seminar is at least an indication for some kind of legitimacy within the Iranian government, claimed the Washington Post in an article covering the event. The recently arrested Iranian philosopher and journalist Dr. Ramin Jahanbegloo    Meanwhile, student activists at Tehran’s Sharif University fight against what they see as an governmental attempt to gain greater control over universities. The protests were sparked off by the burial of three soldiers killed during the Iran-Iraq War taking place outside the university’s mosque on March 13. The soldiers killed in that war are attributed a saint-like status in Iran and have numerous squares and streets named after them. The Iranian government claims that the burials of “martyrs” in public places, including universities, serve the purpose of reminding the public of those who lost their lives fighting for the country. Student groups however have expressed their strong concern that the real purpose behind this measure could be the exertion of influence. They blame the state of using the burials on campus as a pretext to suppress students’ freedom seeking movements under the claim that they disregard the soldiers’ sacrifice. The activists fear that universities will be turned into military zones. A legitimate preoccupation — only in China, more violations of academic freedom have taken place than in Iran, says NEAR, Network for Education and Academic Rights, while Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) call Iran Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists and bloggers. RSF particularly opposed the recent arrest of philosopher and journalist Dr. Ramin Jahanbegloo, one of Iran’s most important intellectuals. Jahanbegloo was arrested on April 28 at Tehran airport after criticising the Iranian government in a series of interviews, and has been held incommunicado for nearly a week, Human Rights Watch informed. He has studied in Harvard and at the Sorbonne and heads the Department for Contemporary Studies at the Cultural Research Bureau in Tehran, where he organised lectures with Jürgen Habermas, Timothy Garton Ash, Michael Walzer, and Michael Ignatieff, in front of thousands of Iranian students. Apparently, the so-called clash of civilisations is not simply taking place between West and East, between Islam and Christianity — but the split is going right through Iran’s students’ community. | Learn more about Iran