The Egyptian police Sunday turned down a request from a youth opposition movement to hold a peaceful march from Cairo's largest square to the Parliament Monday without giving specific reasons. "The request from the April 6 Movement to hold such a march is rejected," Cairo police chief Ismail el-Shaer said in a statement Sunday.
He added that this could negatively affect public security at this “critical” area of the Egyptian capital.
Three representatives of the April 6 Youth Movement had sent a petition to el-Shaer, asking him to let them organise a march from Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo to the Parliament to protest at the state of emergency, which has been in force in Egypt for almost 30 years.
The April 6 Movement is an Egyptian Facebook group, which started in Spring 2008 to support workers in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, an industrial town in the Nile Delta, who were planning to strike on April 6.
According to Mohamed Adel, an Internet blogger and a member of the movement, everyone except the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) was supporting the movement's protest and was ready to join tomorrow’s march.
"We will try our best to stage the protest despite the security refusal. We are calling for our missing rights," Adel told The Gazette by phone.
