About 300 people gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square yesterday, not to honour the instigators of the revolt that five years ago overthrew Egypt's long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak but to praise the police who tried to stop them. "We are here to celebrate with our brothers, fathers and colleagues in the Egyptian police... who sacrificed their lives and blood for us," said one of the demonstrators, 52-year-old Refaat Sabry.He wore a pin on his jacket depicting Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt's latest general-turned-president, whose crackdown on the youth activists who led the 2011 revolution, and on the Islamists it later brought to power, has dashed hopes for a new era of political freedom."Continue Mr President," read a placard held by one man, reversing the demand for "the fall of the regime" - the rallying cry of the Arab Spring uprisings that shook entrenched leaders from Tunisia to Yemen in a single year.Five years later, some of the countries touched by the revolts have slipped into war or chaos and others have seen the return of rulers less willing than their predecessors to tolerate criticism.In the first democratic elections after the revolt in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's oldest Islamist movement, emerged from the shadows to dominate both parliament and the presidency.Sisi, then Egypt's military chief, removed President Mohamed Morsi from power in 2013 and banned the brotherhood after a turbulent period of mass protests against it.In the weeks that followed hundreds of Morsi's supporters were killed in the streets and thousands were locked up.Liberal and leftist activists, some of whom had supported Sisi's deposing of the brotherhood, soon found themselves on the wrong side of the new authorities, who now call the protests against Morsi, which began on June 30, as the real revolution.Laws were passed curbing protests and expanding the jurisdiction of military courts. Sisi went on to win a presidential poll with almost 98% of the vote.There are no official celebrations to mark the uprising against Mubarak and security forces have launched a campaign to discourage protests and have detained people including administrators of Facebook pages and student activists.Instead, the focus has been on celebrating the police.Hundreds of police and soldiers have reportedly been killed in attacks by Islamist insurgents since Morsi's removal in 2013...