9 - 15 May 2002
Issue No.585
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 May 2002 Issue No.585 |
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Effigy burning ban
THIS YEAR'S traditional spring ceremony in Port Said, in which effigies of the nasty personality of the year are burnt, was canceled. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took the honours last year.
Security officials did not say why Sunday's event in the port city straddling the northern tip of the Suez Canal was cancelled, but sources said there were fears that the burning of dummies could spark a fire, following the installation of a natural gas network two years ago
Security officials warned that anyone violating the ban would receive unspecified jail sentences, in addition to fines of at least LE100.
The festival dates from 1917 and is held on the day before the Egyptian spring holiday of Sham El-Nessim. Port Saidi's call the sacrificial dummy, "The Allenby," in reference to the late field marshal Edmund Henry Allenby, commander of the British forces stationed in Egypt during World War I. Egyptians of the day found him a brutal character. The "Allenby" changes each year, to reflect the ebbs and flows of public opinion.
Aid obstruction
THE EGYPTIAN Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada (EPCSPI) issued a lengthy statement on Monday condemning police harassment of pro-Palestinian solidarity action. Four members of the committee were briefly arrested on 21 April and accused of collecting donations without the permission of the Social Affairs Ministry and in violation of the military order of 1992. The committee has been receiving donations since its formation at the start of the Palestinian Intifada in September 2000. To date, the EPCSPI -- which lacks legal status -- has sent nine aid convoys of food, medicine, clothes and blankets to the Palestinians. Although the military order bans collecting or sending donations without official permission, the government had until now turned a blind-eye to the committee's activities.
That is with the exception of the arrest of Farid Zahran last year, a founding member of EPCPI, on charges of planning to hold demonstrations marking the 1st anniversary of the Intifada. Most of the committee's Palestine solidarity actions and activities, however, have been carried out freely.
But the organisation's recent statement, which says that police confiscated a truck and aid material, has been interpreted as a signal of the government's growing intolerance of the EPCPI's activities.
On Tuesday, an EPCSPI delegation presented a statement to the prosecutor-general and another to the UN headquarters protesting the UN secretary-general's decision to abort a fact finding mission into Israel's atrocities in the Jenin refugee camp.
Another pyramid
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have stumbled on the 110th pyramid to be discovered in Egypt, reports Nevine El-Aref. The five-block pyramid, dating from the fourth dynasty, was found in Abu Rawash, about 15 kilometres south of the Giza plateau.
The latest discovery was made by a Franco- Swiss team excavating the tomb of the fourth dynasty Pharaoh Jedef-Re, son and successor of Cheops, also known as Khufu. The archaeologists were clearing sand around Jedef- Re's unfinished pyramid, when they found the small limestone tomb, believed to be of Jedef- Re's wife.
"What has made the discovery so exciting is the four-metre deep well found at the pyramid's northern gate," said Zahi Hawass, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
He explained that during the excavation of the well, clay fragments and an alabaster pot bearing Cheops's name have been found. Inscribed cement fragments, similar to the ones found in Djoser's southern tomb in Saqqara, were also among the artefacts.
Michel Valoga, head of the excavation mission, said that a 36mm high alabaster pot, a basalt measurement tool, burnt clay bread plaques, canopic jars and limestone fragments believed to be parts of a sarcophagus, are also among the discoveries.
Compiled by Shaden Shehab
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