Rape claims, WikiLeaks and internet freedom - The Guardian

Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations (Report, 8 December). Women in Sweden don't fare better than we do in Britain when it comes to rape. Though Sweden has the highest per capita number of reported rapes in Europe and these have quadrupled in the last 20 years, conviction rates have decreased. On 23 April 2010 Carina Hägg and Nalin Pekgul (respectively MP and chairwoman of Social Democratic Women in Sweden) wrote in the Göteborgs-Posten that "up to 90% of all reported rapes never get to court. In 2006 six people were convicted of rape though almost 4,000 people were reported". They endorsed Amnesty International's call for an independent inquiry to examine the rape cases that had been closed and the quality of the original investigations.

Assange, who it seems has no criminal convictions, was refused bail in England despite sureties of more than £120,000. Yet bail following rape allegations is routine. For two years we have been supporting a woman who suffered rape and domestic violence from a man previously convicted after attempting to murder an ex-partner and her children – he was granted bail while police investigated.

There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety. In the south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.

Katrin Axelsson

Women Against Rape

• The heading of John Naughton's article (Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It's your choice, 7 December) does more than introduce a rather unpleasant new adjective. In criticising governments and agencies that are trying to limit or close down the WikiLeaks operation, he seems to give the internet itself a moral superiority that it does not possess. All the internet does is allow information to be copied, disseminated and accessed at an unprecedented rate; it can offer no value judgment about the outcome. For example, the internet can allow a prospective employer to have in front of them an embarrassing photograph posted on a social network by an applicant 10 years ago. Do we say, jolly good, the more openness the better – no, we routinely advise young people to use the privacy settings and to be careful about whom they trust with personal data. Clearly this is advice some governments need to take about their own internal data.

It's too early to tell whether the present torrent of releases will have good or bad effects. But surely the question of whether we should live with WikiLeaks or close down the internet is a false dichotomy. The need for some things to be secret some of the time has not changed; the rise of the internet just makes it harder to hang on to them.

Hugh Davies

Sandhurst, Berkshire

• Congratulations on publishing Naughton's outstanding article about WikiLeaks. It refreshingly acknowledges the corruption of governments that continue unjust wars merely to save face, even after they themselves acknowledge that they can never achieve their goals. It also exposes whose side such powerful (and popular) internet sites as Amazon, Facebook, PayPal etc are on when it comes to a choice between the power elites and the people.

Jim McCluskey

Twickenham, Middlesex

• The drip, drip of the WikiLeaks revelations exposes the so-called special relationship between the US and the UK as being totally one-sided (Report, 4 December). The UK supports the US's wars with the lives of its troops and billions of pounds of treasure, and allows the US to use its Nato airbases for missions outside those for which they were originally intended. Furthermore, the UK promises to protect the US from its investigation of the Iraq war, and allows its citizens (Gary McKinnon, for example) to face being expedited to a justice system that, after conviction, will impose a much harsher sentence than what they would receive for a similar offence in the UK. Ted Heath was right in refusing to accept the concept of a special relationship between the US and the UK. A special relationship must offer advantages to both parties. This one doesn't.

George Lewis

Brackley, Northamptonshire

• The latest WikiLeaks revelations on the al-Megrahi case, if factually accurate, raise some disturbing questions (Report, 8 December). What, for instance, led the Libyan regime to think that it might achieve its objective of securing al-Megrahi's release by issuing threats against Britain? Could it have been because they had witnessed Saudi Arabia's successful bid to end the Serious Fraud Office's investigation of allegations of corruption by BAE Systems in negotiating the al-Yamamah arms deal, by issuing threats against Britain just three years before?

Professor Philip Stenning

Keele University

• Idiots, liars, racists, gangsters and torturers have human rights too; so it's deplorable that WickedLeaks should have so comprehensively abrogated these. Nonetheless, we owe Julian Assange and his source(s) an immense debt of gratitude for finally, incontrovertibly, rubbishing the purveyors of ID and DNA databases who tried to pretend that data would be secure and only accessible to those authorised and needing access, and regularly trotted out the mantra: "If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear." Well, those who've been WikiLeaked may not exactly confirm the latter ... but it's rather delicious to see it come back and bite them!

David Lewin

Oxford

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Park51 drawings prove how far 'Ground Zero mosque' claims are from truth - The Guardian

Park51 in an artist's rendering – the building had been dubbed the 'Ground Zero mosque' by rightwingers and Christian extremists, but is intended for multifaith and secular use. Photograph: Soma Architects/AP

Judging by the criticism thrown at the Muslim centre planned for downtown Manhattan, you would think developers intended to build an Islamic citadel right on top of Ground Zero with "sponsored by al-Qaida" written on its front.

In fact, the proposed scheme for the much-slated "Ground Zero mosque" is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero – it is a multifaith community centre with an Islamic prayer area, two blocks north of the site where the twin towers once stood. Now, conceptual drawings of the building have been released, revealing a planned structure that is strikingly modern and in keeping with the spirit of New York's most cutting-edge design.

Park51, named after its location on the site of an old coat factory in Park Place, would be a sleek 15-storey tower sandwiched between older buildings.

The most vivid element of the renderings, drawn by a New York-based design studio, Soma Architects, is the building's white frontage, which is broken up into a lattice of interlocking geometric shapes. At night, it would be lit up like a glistening honeycomb.

The device is a clear allusion to the intricate arabesque motifs found in Islamic architecture, and is reminiscent of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, which shot the architect Jean Nouvel to fame in the 1980s. But it also pays homage to other religions, with the Jewish Star of David being clearly visible among its patterns.

Contrary to the mass of bad publicity that has been heaped on it in recent weeks, the building is designed to be multifaith and also secular.

Sharif el-Gamal, the developer of the $120m (£76m) project, told Associated Press that nearly a quarter of its space would be devoted to a sports and fitness centre, which, it is hoped, would attract New York residents of any faith and ethnicity for a fee of up to $2,700 a year per family. Another floor would be given over to a playground and childcare area.

In addition, there would be a restaurant and exhibition space, and on the 12th floor a memorial and sanctuary remembering the events of 11 September 2001 that would again be multidenominational.

"I don't think that once this thing gets built, anyone will be picketing," Gamal told AP.

The most controversial aspect of the scheme – its Muslim prayer space, which would occupy two floors in the basement – will not be a mosque at all as the construction of the building does not satisfy the stringent requirements for a sanctified mosque.

Seen from the inside, the renderings show the lattice work casting intricate shadows across the white floors, another allusion to arabesque design with its emphasis on naturally lit interiors.

The drawings are only a vision of how the building might go. An official architect for the project has yet to be appointed, and ground breaking on the construction will not begin for at least three years.

By then, the developer and the charity behind the project, the Cordoba Initiative, hope that the furore will have died down.

Gamal said that he regretted the way things had gone. "I would have done things a lot differently during this process if I understood what we were up against. People have been calling this the 'Ground Zero mosque'. It's not at Ground Zero and it's not a mosque. Our identity has been stolen from us. It has been stolen by extremists."

The attack has been led by Christian evangelical and rightwing political groups, who say Park51 is a "victory mosque", revelling in the glory of 9/11. In the most extreme case, this September, Pastor Terry Jones threatened to burn 200 Qur'ans in protest at the centre.

First illustrations of the 15-storey Park51 development planned to house the Islamic centre reveal a decidedly upbeat and glamorous building, more festive than threatening. These preliminary renderings by Soma, however, should be thought of as what might be rather than what definitely will. An architect has yet to be officially appointed.

Even so, the interiors – a honeycomb structure awash with daylight – look as if they could be uplifting and special. But then, you would expect something glamorous and fresh from Soma, a New York firm founded by the Lebanese-born Michel Abboud, who has recently completed the enjoyably hip Tartinery Nolita brasserie in SoHo.

Equally, at least four floors of Park51 are to be given over to a gym and spa, and only two basement floors to a Muslim prayer hall. With a restaurant, artists' studios and a childcare centre, this $140m building clad in an abstract play of Islamic patterns could hardly be less militantly hardcore. As one young man attending the nearby Sufi al-Farah mosque in lower Manhattan told the New York Times: "Because this is a new country, it revolutionises everything. Food, industry, philosophy and even religion." He might have added: "Islamic architecture, too."

Jonathan Glancey

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