Elin Ersson, a Swedish student and activist, recently live-streamed herself on Facebook as she held a protest to stop one man from being deported back to Afghanistan. According to The Guardian, Ersson got on a flight from Gothenburg to Turkey after she found out an Afghan asylum seeker was meant to be deported on it. She then refused to sit down on the plane until he was removed.
In the video, you can clearly see people getting frustrated with Ersson, but she repeatedly asserts that the man will most likely get killed if he is forced to go back to Afghanistan. "I don't want a man's life to be taken away just because you don't want to miss your flight," she says. "I am doing what I can to save a person’s life. As long as a person is standing up, the pilot cannot take off. All I want to do is to stop the deportation, and then I will comply with the rules. This is all perfectly legal, and I have not committed a crime."
At one point, a passenger takes her phone, and someone says to her, "It's your country's rules," and complains that she is frightening the children on the flight. Ersson replies, "I'm trying to change my country's rules. I don't like them. It's not right to send people to hell."
Eventually, the man is removed from the plane, and you can hear people applauding in the background. He is reported to still be in custody and could be deported at another time.
Madison is the digital deputy editor at ELLE, where she also covers news, politics, and culture. If she’s not online, she’s probably napping or trying not to fall while rock climbing.
