A color festival in the Iraqi city of Basra has been banned by authorities because gender mixing at the festivities may cause distress to families who lost loved ones to Islamic State.

In order to cancel the festival – a smaller version of the Indian festival of Holi, where revelers throw colorful powder and water at each other - authorities have gone to the extent of erecting concrete walls around the park where it was supposed to be held, AFP reported.

People "without conscience or hearts or morals come to hold mixed-sex festivals that bring them out to be joyful, and the families of the martyrs see them and weep for their children," Basra provinical council member Murtada al-Shahmani told AFP.

In response to the ban, one of the festival's organizers told AFP the point of the festival was to move beyond the sorrow in the war-torn country. "We are trying to make our young people forget the violence," Nabil Muslim, 21, told AFP.

"Now, I am not able to leave my house out of fear for myself," said Muslim, who is 21.

"What was done by the authorities is a restriction on the personal liberties of the young people," he said. "They want to return us to the time of dictatorship."

A similar festival was celebrated in Baghdad recently, raising the ire of Iraqi conservatives, mainly among Islamic political parties.

One Iraqi lawmaker, Hassan Salim, even accused the event's organizers of being members of ISIS.

“These painful views of the immodesty and moral deformation are aimed to spread moral turpitude and destroy the manners of the Iraqi society," Salim, who is also prominent leader of the Shia militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq wrote on Facebook, the Middle East Eye reported.

Following the wave of conservative criticism, security forces cracked down on nightspots around Baghdad, with many clubbers and artists arrested and beaten, MME reported.