Westminster Meeting House door. Photo: Courtesy of Westminster Meeting.
Challenging witness: Sahanika Ratnayake has an activist’s response to the Westminster raid
‘All I can do is quietly say what I have observed and believe to be true.’
I was in a somewhat rarefied position following the raid on Westminster Meeting House, simultaneously receiving updates from both Quaker channels and activist groups. In addition to being a semi-regular attendee of Quaker Meetings (in fact, my first Meeting was at Westminster), I have been a direct action and civil disobedience activist for about five years, mostly as part of the environmental movement, but increasingly in solidarity with the Palestinian people. At the time of the raid, I was living with one of the spokespeople for Youth Demand, the group that had precipitated it. Youth Demand calls for action on two of the biggest crises of the present time: the climate emergency and an end to arms sales to Israel.
