Today is national Police Day in Egypt. It marks the occasion, 59 years ago, when police in Ismailia refused to surrender to British forces and 41 of them died in a three-hour battle. Their act of heroism is officially commemorated every year on January 25.

But since 1952 perceptions of the Egyptian police have changed – from liberators to oppressors, as a headline in al-Masry al-Youm puts it – and this year's Police Day is turning into a day of protest or, as some are calling it, a day of "revolution against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment". Writing in the Guardian, Jack Shenker describes the preparations.

For Egypt, this will be the first major test of the "Tunisia effect". The protests are being organised by the Kifaya ("Enough") movement and the 6 April Youth Movement. More than 80,000 people have declared their support through Facebook, and support is also expected from industrial workers.

Some of the opposition parties have said they won't be taking part, as has Mohamed Elbaradei, the reform campaigner. Even the Muslim Brotherhood has declined to give its formal backing. In that sense, it looks like becoming at least partly a contest between the old, institutional, opposition politics and the more informal "new politics" organised online.

"Regardless of how many people turn up, these protests will be highly significant," Nabil Abdel Fattah, of Al-Ahram Research Centre, told the Guardian. "Those confronting the regime on Tuesday will be the sons and daughters of virtual activism – a new generation that has finally found something around which they can unite and rally.They are the product of a government that has never offered them any ideological vision to believe in, and now they have themselves become a symbol of contemporary Egypt."

The government has already been organising counter-demonstrations in support of the police and the detested interior minister, Habib el-Adli has threatened to "arrest any persons expressing their views illegally".

"Youth street action has no impact and security is capable of deterring any acts outside the law," he said in remarks quoted by Reuters.

Three people were reportedly arrested yesterday for distributing flyers advertising the protests.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 25 Jan 2011.