CAIRO: A festival aimed at promoting the values of citizenship scheduled to place on Friday at Al-Azhar Park was canceled citing “security reasons,” members of the Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination group (MARED) who organized the event, said in a press conference Thursday. Three days prior to the event, its organizers received a phone call from the administration of Al-Azhar Park retracting its approval to host the event because of objections from security bodies. The event was organized by MARED in collaboration with the ِAl-Mawred Al-Thaqafy (Culture Resource) NGO under the slogan “Egypt for all Egyptians.” The festival's goals were to increase awareness on the values of citizenship, to condemn the violations of citizens' rights based on their religion or beliefs, to amend the discriminating legislations and to activate the laws that advocate citizenship and equality in the Egyptian constitution. The program of the festival included performances by bands, poets and theater troops in addition to art galleries and artistic activities for kids. Sara Naguib, general coordinator of the festival, was among the delegation that met with Al-Azhar Park's administration to discuss the cancellation of the festival. According to Naguib, Salah Sarhan, head of security at Al-Azhar Park, didn't give the delegation a clear explanation and only cited security reasons, even though the organizers had obtained all the necessary permits and had already received an approval from the park. When contacted by Daily News Egypt, Sarhan refused to reveal any information saying that he was not authorized to do so. Mohamed Mounir Megahed, spokesperson for MARED, said that the cancellation of the festival is an indication that security forces are responsible for the recent sectarian clashes as they condone the acts of extremists who threaten to divide Egypt and ban this event which calls for national unity. Megahed said that the group has suffered from security intervention before as its first seminar in 2007 was canceled three times and its first conference in 2008 which was planned to take place at the Journalists' Syndicate was banned and they were forced to hold it elsewhere. “The security forces insist on considering the issue of sectarianism a security issue that only they can discuss, and no one else has the right to discuss it,” Megahed said. Megahed attributed the event's cancellation to security forces' weakness, saying they are unable to maintain security within large crowds so instead they cancel the events altogether. “We will keep trying, this has become a battle of wills and we will not let our country be divided, Christians will not live on the sidelines, they will be integrated in every social class and on every street,” says Megahed. Bahey El Din Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, told Daily News Egypt that the decision to cancel the festival raises a lot of questions. “It's a shame that this happens at a time where calls for religious discrimination have expanded everywhere: in mosques and on television, so it raises questions on why an event that combats these negative currents with an artistic approach that doesn't create any sensitivities would be banned,” said Hassan. Osama Eid, one of the organizers of the festival, said that even though the festival was canceled, its agenda will be delivered through other means that the security cannot control. “They can cancel the festival, but they can't stop the media and the people on Facebook from saying that what happened is a mark of shame on the record of the regime,” he said.
