English: Dusk 4 February 2012. A protester defiantly waves an Egyptian flag with the emblems of Christianity and Islam ( the cross and the crescent ) added - a message of religious unity. Clouds of tear gas are lit up with an eerie glow by the sinking sun.

He is standing in Mansour Street near to the junction of Mohammed Mahmoud Street in Downtown Cairo and was said to have been a relative of one of the 28 Christian demonstrators who were shot, stabbed or run down by armoured military vehicles outside Cairo's state media building in Maspero in central Cairo on 9th October 2011.

He is only about two hundred metres away from Egypt's Ministry of Interior building - which had become a symbol of police repression. Facing him, out of frame or hidden by the clouds of gas, were hundreds of heavily armed riot police and soldiers.

The Islamic Crescent and the Christian Cross are drawn together on the Egyptian flag. To the other side of the central Eagle is the Arabic letter Y which taken together can be read as indicating "Egyptian" - the inference being that Christians and Muslims are first and foremost all Egyptians.

According to Alisdare Hickson, "This photo is one of the last I took and uploaded to Flickr on the day before I was arrested. [The photo] has been slightly and somewhat crudely photoshopped to remove a photographer who was nearer the flag holder than I was although unlike myself (an amateur snapper) and most of the protesters he was sensibly equipped with a gas mask.The protesters were demonstrating over the death of 79 football fans, 72 of them Al Ahly supporters, during a match at Port Said on 1st February 2012."