1000s in Cairo demonstrate to slam Egypt protest law

Egyptians have held a demonstration in the capital, Cairo, to express opposition to the controversial protest law.

Demonstrators on Saturday marched on the Ittihadiya presidential palace.

The event had been called by various opposition groups and movements and it began at Cairo’s Saray El Koba metro station in Heliopolis District, from where protesters marched to the palace a few kilometers away, Ahram Online reported.

While chanting slogans against the country’s military and police forces, the protesters carried banners holding the names of numerous detainees and a long banner that read, “Release Egypt.”

Among the slogans often chanted by the protesters were, “Down with military rule,” “Freedom for the detained” and “Down with the protest law.”

Protesters also tore down from walls and buildings stickers and posters favoring the presidential bid of former head of the armed forces, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who led the ouster of Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and installed the current interim government.

“The revolution did not die. The Egyptian revolution is complicated and continuing as you can see. We are here at the presidential palace against the protest law, which detains all our fellow activists and revolutionaries at a time when all the thieves and corrupt figures are being released,” said one of the protesters.

Thousands of Egyptian protesters, mainly supporters of Morsi, have been arrested during demonstrations against the protest law, which bans all protests not pre-approved by the military-installed interim government.

The law has often been slammed by Egypt’s political groups, parties and rights activists as a tool to crack down on dissent.