The Tahrir Square slogan proclaiming that “The army and the people are one hand” will seem like so much wishful thinking to many of Egypt’s youthful democracy activists now that they find themselves increasingly at odds with the transitional military government that replaced President Hosni Mubarak. This week’s crackdown on media criticism of the military as an institution is but the latest indication of a parting of ways on Egypt’s future: the military authorities called in a prominent blogger and two popular TV journalists for questioning after they criticized the military, which has continued to arrest and harass protesters amid a growing chorus of criticism over the generals’ actions. Yet, at the same time, the military leadership insists that it shares the democratic goals of the revolution.
Many Egyptians were incensed Monday by a CNN report quoting an Egyptian general who admitted that the military conducted humiliating “virginity tests” on female protesters arrested in March. “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine,” the general, who was quoted anonymously, told CNN. “These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square.” He said the invasive tests had been conducted in order to pre-empt rape allegations against the army — an explanation that Amnesty International deemed “utterly perverse.”
