First day

My vigil outside the arms trade conference in Westminster on Monday morning went well. Many passers-by took flyers, including a number of stern-faced delegates. I stayed about two-and-a-half hours, then went off to say hello to the Disarm DSEi / Smash EDO noise demo folk round the other side, before paying a visit to Brian, Barbara and Maria in Parliament Square.

Brian and Barbara were apparently seriously assaulted by a racist member of the public last Thurday. In response, instead of the police arresting the offender, several police paramilitary thugs from the Territorial Support Group (responsible for much of the police brutality at the G20 protests in April - including the death of Ian Tomlinson - and previous Climate Camps, etc) assaulted and arrested Brian and Barbara. Barbara has been in touch with the Australian High Commission about this latest in a long line of police assaults and malicious arrests on the Parliament Square peace campaigners, and their lawyer has demanded the CCTV footage of the incident.

Maria is currently doing solidarity work with the Iranian Camp Ashraf campaigners who are opposed to the hardline Iranian regime, a dozen of whom have been on hunger strike for the past six weeks (Monday was day 42), and I went with her for a while to join the daily demo and delegation at the Foreign Office. Some weeks ago, Iranian refugees living in Camp Ashraf, Iraq who are opposed to the hardline Iranian regime were attacked by Iraqi forces (said to be under the influence of Iran), resulting in the death of a dozen residents, hundreds injured and 36 being taken hostage by Iraqi forces as US troops looked on and did nothing. This vicious attack, the plight of the hostages and the resulting hunger strikes and protests in Iraq, London and cities around the world has received minimal media coverage. It is worth noting that the Iraqi administration has been officially invited to this week's DSEi arms fair by the British government. Maybe they will buy more equipment to commit further atrocities against Camp Ashraf residents.

Maria has also recently been highlighting the atrocities commited against the Tamils by Sri Lankan forces and the people of Gaza by Israel, and also campaigning against a Western invasion of Iran as part of her Peace Strike campaign.

In the evening, I joined a moving hour-long silent candle-lit vigil outside the ExCel centre, attended by around 80 people, including many locals and people of different faith communities. This was preceeded by a procession from Royal Victoria DLR station. Many exhibitors could be seen wheeling suitcases past us - I offered them and security guards my flyers, and some of them accepted.

On Tuesday I will join the Campaign Against Arms Trade rally at ExCel from 11am, then travel with them (hopefully on one of their specially-decorated anti-arms trade Routemaster buses) to the UKTI DSO (I think it stands for Death Squad Organisation) offices in Victoria, where I plan to stay until at least 5pm.

As for the fast itself, I'm still feeling fine, apart from suffering a bit of a sniffle at the moment. People have been very supportive. Yesterday a journalist from BBC Russia phoned me up to ask if I could do an interview in Russian - she seemed a bit disappointed when I said I couldn't speak the language, but was nevertheless supportive of my action. I hope more people will join me in central London during the week.