The woman, Elin Ersson, was headed to Istanbul from Gothenburg on Monday when she noticed an Afghan man sitting in the back of the plane to be deported back to Afghanistan.

With every else on the plane seated, Ersson stood up from her seat and started livestreaming a video with her mobile phone on Facebook.  

"Right now I'm at the airport in the airplane, and there is a person getting deported to Afghanistan, and the people working here are trying to take my phone away from me and are trying to forcibly move me," she says in the video. "In Afghanistan there is war, and this man faces death. I'm just trying to save his life. All I want to do is to stop his deportation. As long as I stand and if hopefully more people get up, the pilot can not take off."

Ersson explains that she will only sit down once the man is taken off the plane. In the video, one could hear flight personnel ordering her to sit down and turn off her phone.

Man taken off the plane

The video also shows angry passengers who try to approach her and convince her to sit down. Eventually, other passengers join her in the protest.

In the end, the Afghan man was exited off the plane. Elin Ersson too was removed by airport security. 

Ersson had protested Swedish deportation policy with a group of 25 other activists before boarding the plane. Her video was viewed more than 2 million times on Facebook and Youtube since it went online and she has been praised for her bravery.

Swedish authorities, however, say that she had disobeyed the rules and that passengers who refuse to obey a pilot’s orders while on board a plane can face fines or up to six months in jail. Authorities also said that the Afghan was in custody and would be deported, though they did not say when.