"The skies are darkening over Egypt. The filing of fresh charges against deposed President Mohamed Morsi, the jailing of three prominent secular leaders of the 2011 revolution, and a savage attack on a provincial police headquarters, all in the same week, point to a future in which Egypt's politics will be conducted by violent means. How miserably different this is from the open and civilised democracy to which the revolution once seemed to be leading.
That revolution is now being torn up by its roots. The young Egyptians who created the popular networks which brought down the Mubarak regime are now being victimised by its successor. The three men sent to jail belonged to the April 6 Movement, established in early 2008 to support a strike by textile workers in Mahallah. Both April 6 and the broader Kifaya ("Enough") movement used Facebook and Twitter to organise and communicate. Such acts of defiance and solidarity, and the innovative use of new media, kept the tradition of radical secular opposition alive. These young people provided the rhetoric and skills which, along with the Tunisian example, helped the Egyptian revolution to succeed.
The symbol of the April 6 movement was a raised fist. But Egypt now has rulers who are determined that fist will never be raised against them again. Two co-founders of the movement, Ahmed Maher and Mohamed Adel, have been sentenced to three years, along with another activist, Ahmed Douma. They broke a new law which effectively bans demonstrations. This followed a raid on the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights in which staff were beaten, and Mr Adel arrested. It is now evident that the Egyptian military, behind its unconvincing civilian facade, is ready to be as hard on its secular as on its religious opponents. It duly demonstrated its even-handed repressiveness by filing the fresh charges against Mr Morsi, accusing him of murdering protesters and of a plot to bring down the Mubarak government with help from abroad. The death penalty could apply to Mr Morsi and to others charged with him if they are found guilty.
Governments reap what they sow. Tuesday's bombing of a police headquarters in Mansoura was followed by a declaration by the Egyptian cabinet that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organisation. It is not at all established that the Brotherhood was responsible. But Mansoura shows what happens when legitimate political expression ceases to be possible. The revolution decapitated the Egyptian security state, based on the army, the police and the business elite, by removing Mubarak. But it has grown a new head, and it is now back, quite literally, with a vengeance."
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