Elin Ersson, a student activist on board a plane at Gothenburg airport, prevented the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker from Sweden by refusing to sit down until the man was removed from the flight.

Ersson, a student at Gothenburg University, bought a ticket for the flight from Gothenburg to Turkey after she and other asylum activists found out that a young Afghan was due to be deported on it, according to Swedish press reports.

As she entered the plane Ersson started to live-stream her protest in English. The video received more than half a million hits on Tuesday.

Facing both sympathy and hostility from passengers, the footage shows Ersson struggling to keep her composure, reported the UK’s Guardian.

“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 not going to sit down until the person is off the plane.”

Repeatedly challenged by a steward to stop filming, Ersson 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 stop the deportation and then I will comply with the rules here. This is all perfectly legal and I have not committed a crime.”

When an angry passenger, who appears to be English, tried to seize her phone, she said: “What is more important, a life, or your time? … I want him to get off the plane because he is not safe in Afghanistan. I am trying to change my country’s rules, I don’t like them. It is not right to send people to hell.”

After a tense standoff, during which the airport authorities declined to use force to eject Ersson, passengers broke into applause when the asylum seeker was taken off the plane.

Swedavia, the company that runs Landvetter airport in Gothenburg, confirmed that an Afghan asylum seeker and three security personnel had left the plane, followed by Ersson.

This protest highlights domestic opposition to Sweden’s tough asylum regime, the Guardian reported. 

After the deadly attack on the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel in January, that killed 22 people, and a bomb that killed more than 100 people in the city center, Sweden briefly halted deportations to Afghanistan. But the Swedish Migration Board stands by its assessment that the country is safe for asylum seekers whose applications have been denied.

Swedish media said the man due to be deported on Monday had disappeared but Deutsche Welle reported that he was still in custody and would be deported at a later date.