Activists gathered in Tahrir Square on Friday, February 25, 2011, to mark two weeks since Mubarak's resignation and to press the ruling military council over promises they said were going unmet. Their demands were the resignation of Shafiq's government, a Mubarak-era holdover, the release of political prisoners and a general amnesty. When the curfew began after midnight, soldiers fired into the air and used batons to clear the square. The army's Supreme Council later apologised, saying the confrontation had not been intentional.
Hosni Mubarak had resigned on February 11, 2011, after eighteen days of mass protest, and power passed to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Many of the activists who had organised the uprising grew suspicious that the generals meant to preserve the old regime's structure rather than dismantle it, and Ahmed Shafiq, whom Mubarak had appointed prime minister in the last days of his rule, became the focus of their anger.
The gathering on February 25 was the first large test of how the military would treat protesters now that it held power itself. After the curfew began, military police moved in, firing into the air and using batons; demonstrators outside parliament reported being hit with tasers, and several were detained with visible injuries. Within hours the Supreme Council issued an apology and promised that such confrontations would not be repeated.
The pressure worked, at least in part. Shafiq resigned on March 3. But the tension that surfaced that night, between the revolutionaries in the square and the generals in charge, would shape Egyptian politics for years.
Key people: Ahmed Shafiq