Saturday/Sunday June 15th/16th 2002 - Special Vigil: 30 hour vigil on the anniversary of Ngawang Sangdrol's kidnap. We shared the pavement with Falun Gong . They were on day 10 of a 13 day & night vigil, and seemed to be finding little problem keeping a presence of 20. We ? well we found it hard to have more than 7 present at any moment, and attendance was under half last year's. Nevertheless 26 people turned up at one time or another, 5 spent the night [Malcolm,Simon,Paula, Alice and Trudie] and 2 spent all 30 hours.The weather was kinder than last year with just 3 hours rain , all in the middle of the night. The really positive thing was the letter writing. We wrote more than 100 letters on site and more are still being written. It is easy to be lulled into thinking that because other groups have been involved in this aspect of the campaign to free Ngawang Sangdrol for some time all MPs and MEPs must be aware of the case. But already this week I have heard from 2 of the London MEPs I wrote to. Neither had heard of the case and both are pleased to take it up. So if you have not written already please do so , it could be vital [for address list email Lucy on "punefisher@hotmail.com".] It begins to look as though there are fewer and fewer activists out there although membership lists of groups are said to be healthy. We didn't do much shouting, although Malcolm gave a bit of a yell on the megaphone "Wake up Mr Ambassador, get your bottom out of bed and China out of Tibet". [The police at their discretion asked him to desist. I didn't challenge it although I mused that our treatment was rather different from the Muslem group outside Downing Street, 2 weeks back who were allowed to shout "Kill, kill, Mubarak, Mubarak" and "Tony Blair , watch your back , Osama Bin Ladin is coming back"] We were not much impressed by the reduction in Ngawang's sentence by 18 months.Still only due for release in 2011. Tenth Anniversary of an imprisonment that should never have happened. Its hard to imagine how cruel people must be to do this. For demonstrators there was one moment of light relief when a DPG policeman tried to prevent individuals posting letters to the Ambassador. Needless to say the letters were not offensive [though I for one did not use the lie "your excellency"] but the policeman was apparently touched by poor little China's unhappiness at receiving appeals for Ngawang's release. Patricia proceeded to post some more & laughed while the policeman went through the motions of how she could be arrested. As we left Falun Gong were still meditating putting out positive energies ,they say, that may free Tibet too. ---simon photos: Brian Sunderland