Restrictions on protests and hefty jail terms for girl demonstrators are reviving Egypt's autocratic past, say activists and erstwhile supporters of the government that replaced Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after he was overthrown.
The military, the real power behind the civilian government it installed after Mori's ouster in July, remains wildly popular, and many Egyptians, troubled by a stagnant economy, care more for stability than for rowdy protests.
But even supporters of the new government, and secular activists who viewed it as a lesser evil after Morsi's divisive rule, say it has gone too far by banning all but police-sanctioned protests.
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And proving too much for some was the sight on Wednesday of more than a dozen white-clad women and girls in an Alexandria courtroom cage, as they were sentenced for up to 11 years in jail for taking part in a violent protest in October.
Amnesty International reacted on by saying they should never have been arrested and called for their immediate and unconditional release.
It said their imprisonment sends a "strong signal that there will be no limit to the authorities' efforts to crush opposition and that no one is immune to their iron fist."
Applying the new law on Tuesday, police violently dispersed two small protests by secular demonstrators, arresting some of Egypt's most prominent female activists before dumping them on a desert road at night.
The protests were against a clause in the draft of a new constitution that would allow the military to try civilians before summary tribunals.
Prosecutors have ordered the arrest of two leading secular activists and dissidents under Morsi -- Alaa Abdel Fattah and Ahmed Maher -- for allegedly inciting the protests.
"Deja vu, I'm about to hand myself in to the authorities again on Saturday," Abdel Fattah wrote on Facebook, but he never got the chance to do so.
His wife wrote on Twitter that security services arrested him at their home in western Cairo yesterday and had beaten her during the process.
Abdel Fattah had been already arrested under Morsi's predecessor Hosni Mubarak, then under the transitional military junta that ruled after Mubarak's overthrow and finally during Morsi's year in office.
In the months since the army removed Morsi, more than 1,000 of his supporters have been killed in a police crackdown, and thousands arrested.
