Tourists were observed pushing a boat filled with migrants away from the shoreline as it tried to approach a beach in Greece. A video captured the incident on Saturday, showing a small vessel carrying asylum seekers from Libya heading towards Sarakiniko beach on the island of Gavdos in southern Greece. Onlookers at the beach rushed into the water to prevent their landing, using their hands to push the boat away.

According to local reports, the migrants were safely redirected to the port to avoid confrontation with the angered crowd. This incident coincides with a significant increase in migrant arrivals at Greece’s southern borders this year. Recently, the Greek parliament passed a law to impose stricter penalties on rejected asylum seekers and expedite their repatriation.

Thanos Plevris, the Minister of Immigration and Asylum in Greece, stated that measures are being taken to remove the migrants from the island, with plans for their departure within a few days. The country has witnessed a rise in arrivals from neighboring Libya through islands like Crete and Gavdos, leading to the issuance of a temporary ban on processing asylum applications for migrants from North Africa.

The Greek government’s stance on migration has been stringent under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s conservative administration, which took office in 2019. Criticism has arisen over the tough measures implemented, including the return of ‘hundreds’ of illegal migrants to countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt. Human rights organizations have accused Greece of forcibly expelling asylum seekers at its borders, prompting the European Union to investigate potential human rights violations in several cases.