President Jiang Zemin will be confronted by Falun Gong practitioners when he arrives in London today for the first state visit by a Chinese leader. Members of Chinese dissident groups and campaigners for a free Tibet are co-ordinating their demonstrations to ensure the President is reminded of their causes during his four-day official visit to Britain. But the Falun Gong practitioners are planning more peaceful protests in an attempt to persuade Mr Jiang to lift the ban imposed on the group on the mainland. 'We are certainly not interested in throwing eggs or hiring a truck with loudspeakers to proclaim our cause like some other groups,' the organiser of the Falun Gong protesters, Li Shao, said. 'As a spiritual group we will be organising peaceful protests but we certainly hope Mr Jiang sees us and understands something about what our group stands for.' The group hopes to get permission to hold a candle-light vigil in the centre of London tomorrow night while a banquet is being given in the President's honour at Buckingham Palace. But the group also plans to follow the President throughout his visit and carry out Falun Gong exercises so he could see how peaceful the group is. 'We hope to be able to practise all five of our exercises,' Mr Li said. 'If it is raining, we may not be able to do all of them because some require us to sit on the ground.' Most groups planning demonstrations to coincide with the President's visit said they had been contacted by Chinese officials trying to find out about their protests. 'We know that some groups have been contacted by Xinhua and other officials from the embassy who are hoping Mr Jiang will not be embarrassed by protesters,' Mr Li said. The director of the Free Tibet Campaign, Alison Reynolds, said her group was hoping to hold protests at every venue attended by the President. 'We have been organising our members and have been in contact with other groups to make sure that Mr Jiang sees the Tibetan flag while he is in Britain,' Ms Reynolds said. 'We think the visit is deeply inappropriate considering the current climate of repression in Tibet and we want President Jiang to be left in absolutely no doubt as to the strength of our feelings and commitment.' The Free Tibet Campaign has been contacted by the police, who asked them to report any incidents of harassment by left-wing groups. When Mr Jiang visited Switzerland in March he told the Government it had 'lost a good friend' after he was faced with protesters outside parliament in Berne. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in London said it would be up to the police to control protests. Shui Li, chairman of the British branch of the Federation of Democratic China, said several large protests were being planned during Mr Jiang's visit but he expected there would be larger demonstrations when the President went to France at the end of this week. 'France will be a key country to hold protests because there are a lot of Chinese dissidents there and a larger Chinese population,' he said.
