CAIRO — Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets Wednesday in cities across the country to mark the anniversary of the uprising that ended the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
In Cairo, dozens of processions clogged the streets, wending their way from every corner of the sprawling capital toward the city’s central Tahrir Square.
Some jubilantly celebrated the revolution. Others angrily denounced the continuation of military rule.
The anniversary demonstrations underscored how much has changed in Egypt over the past year. Protests that one year ago were dominated by mostly secular youth groups have taken on a dramatically more Islamist complexion.
The largest Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, holds 47 percent of the country’s newly-elected parliament, which held its inaugural session Monday, and the more hard-line Islamist Salafi movement holds another quarter of the seats.
The hand-in-hand unity that a year ago briefly bound the country’s divided political forces together has long since evaporated. Instead, the country’s Islamist and secular forces congregated Wednesday on opposite sides of Tahrir Square. In some cases, they directed their protests chants at each other.
But Wednesday’s demonstrations also stood as a stark reminder of all that has not changed in the past year. Many protesters shouted the same angry chants Wednesday as they did one year ago, calling for the ouster of the ruling military, just as they once called for Mubarak’s.
They accuse the military of perpetuating many of the same abuses of power as Mubarak’s regime did and doubt it has any intention of ceding power to a democratically-elected civilian ruler.
Some pointed to a report published Wednesday by the media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders that said freedom of the press is worse in Egypt now than it was under Mubarak. In its annual index of global press freedoms, the group dropped Egypt 39 places, from 127 to 166.
In the days leading up to the anniversary celebrations, much of Egypt appeared to draw to a tense standstill, waiting to see whether Wednesday’s demonstrations would fizzle after one day of celebration or explode into another spasm of violent clashes between protesters and security forces, as past protests have.
On Monday evening, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi declared an end to the country’s draconian emergency law, which has long been a top priority of democracy activists in Egypt. But he also said the law would remain in effect in cases of “thuggery,” a yawning loophole that activists said stripped the concession of any significance.
Activists have been planning for weeks for the anniversary celebrations. They have drawn up and distributed elaborate maps for protesters to know the routes of various marches in the city. Others have been in workshops for weeks constructing massive protest puppets and masks, poking fun at the country’s military rulers, or commemorating those who died in protests.
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