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Quakers in Britain are reeling from what they say is an unheard-of violation of one of their places of worship by police officers who forced their way into a meeting house in London and arrested activists gathered there to plan Gaza war protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,\u201d Paul Parker, the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said in a statement<\/a> issued after the raid.<\/p>\n But on Thursday evening, the pacifist group said, more than 20 uniformed police officers, some armed with tasers, forced their way into the meeting house in Westminster, breaking open the front door \u201cwithout warning or ringing the bell.\u201d<\/p>\n The officers searched the building and arrested six women at a gathering of Youth Demand, an unaffiliated activist group that was renting a room to meet in, the Quakers in Britain said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Metropolitan Police said the arrests followed Youth Demand\u2019s plans to \u201cshut down\u201d London with protests next month, according to British media<\/a>. The police said that while they recognized the right to protest, \u201cwe have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality,\u201d British media<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n The arrests raised alarms in England, and came amid a crackdown on Gaza War protesters<\/a> in the United States, especially on college campuses, where some students have denounced Israel\u2019s prosecution of the war against Hamas.<\/p>\n Legal experts say that the Trump administration has been trampling on free speech rights, and after the raid on the meeting house, Quakers in Britain voiced similar concerns.<\/p>\n S<\/p>\n \u201cThis aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalizes protest,\u201d Mr. Parker said.<\/p>\n In recent years, Britain has enacted several measures to crack down on protests and granted new powers to the police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One of the measures, Public Order Act 2023, was described<\/a> by the United Nations human rights chief, Volker T\u00fcrk, as \u201cdeeply troubling.\u201d The law imposes \u201cserious and undue restrictions\u201d on the right of peaceful assembly and criminalizes some forms of peaceful protest by Britons, according to the United Nations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Youth Demand said in a statement<\/a> that when the raid took place, it was having a \u201cWelcome Talk\u201d at the Quaker house to discuss Gaza, the West Bank and the climate crisis, and to share plans for nonviolent civil resistance actions that it has scheduled for next month.<\/p>\n The activists were told that they were being detained on suspicions of \u201cconspiracy to cause a public nuisance,\u201d according to the group. Additional activists from the group were arrested the next day, it said.<\/p>\n Youth Demand said in an email on Sunday that it did not \u201chave the full picture yet,\u201d but that it appeared that about 10 arrests were made on Thursday and Friday and that 11 activists\u2019 homes were raided. All of the activists have been released and none have been charged, the group said.<\/p>\n Youth Demand, which calls on the British government to stop all trade with Israel and to raise money from the wealthy to pay for environmental damage from fossil-fuel burning, was started last year. While relatively small, some of its protests have generated headlines<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In April, the group hung a banner and lined up children\u2019s shoes outside the home of the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, before he became prime minister. \u201cStop the killing\u201d in Gaza, the banner read.<\/p>\n In a statement after the raid, the group <\/span>called on \u201cyoung people to take to the streets day after day and shut London down.\u201d<\/p>\n Ella Grace-Taylor, 20, an actor-musician student who was arrested on Thursday at the meeting house, said in a video<\/a> after her release that the group \u201cwill not be deterred.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe will let this fuel us because we know this means that we are winning,\u201d she said. \u201cIt means that the government, that the police, that the state is afraid of us, that they recognize the power that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n The Metropolitan Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n