Thousands continue protest in Tahrir Square

Thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in other cities around Egypt to rally against the continued domination of the armed forces, showing the resilience of a pro-democracy movement 10 months after the toppling of the country’s president.

Though not as well-attended as gatherings in recent months, the rallies coalesced despite a fervent propaganda campaign by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or Scaf, and its state media allies attempting to depict ongoing demands for them to step down as the work of elite liberals and foreign conspirators.

Protesters from the famous Al Azhar mosque and university campuses around the city poured into the square, calling on Field Marshal Mohammad Hussein Tantawi, head of Scaf, to hand authority to a civilian government.

“Since a year, nothing has changed,” said Mohammad Kalawi, a 33-year-old director of television advertisements and films. “The police and army are still hurting people. There is a fake democracy.”

The military and its supporters organised their own counter-rally in Cairo’s Abbasiya Square, a district known as a residence for many members of the security forces.

The demonstrators depicted the protesters in Tahrir as rowdy vandals, while at the same time accusing them of being linked to the westernised elite, including Mohamed ElBaradei, the former UN official now considering a presidential run.

The anti-military Tahrir protests, capping a week of violent unrest, also came despite the ambivalence of the political Islamist parties now leading elections.

Demonstrators chanted, “Down with the council” and “Egyptian women are a red line”, following the distribution of amateur video footage showing security forces assaulting female protesters and ripping the clothes off one woman who has become a cause célèbre.

The violence outraged many Egyptians, including hundreds of women who gathered in a protest march this week.

Past protests against the military led by the loose coalition of secular liberal activists who sparked the January revolution against Hosni Mubarak fizzled out without the hearty endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose political party appears set to win at least a plurality of votes in ongoing elections.