Police fire water cannons to disperse Egypt protests

Associated Press

CAIRO

Black-clad Egyptian police descended on two small anti-government rallies in Cairo on Tuesday and fired water cannons to disperse them, enforcing a controversial new law restricting protests. The heavy hand fueled a backlash among secular activists and liberals who accuse the military-backed government of accelerating down a path even more authoritarian than the Hosni Mubarak era.

The scenes of protesters being dragged away and beaten, with dozens arrested, pitted security forces against secular youth activists, in a new front after months of a heavy — and far bloodier — crackdown on Islamists since the army’s ouster of President Mohammed Morsi. Criticism came even from supporters of the new military-backed government, who warned that the new law will increase opposition and could push secular activists into a common cause with Islamists.

The criticism presents a sharp challenge to the government: It threatens to break the loose coalition of secular and liberal politicians and revolutionary activists who gave key legitimacy to the military’s July 3 ouster of Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president.

That coalition argued that the military’s move, after massive anti-Morsi protests, was necessary for a democratic, secular Egypt, accusing Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood of subverting the hopes for change after Mubarak’s fall in 2011.