In the early hours of Wednesday, over five hundred people were rescued off the tiny Greek island of Gavdos, having packed into a boat from Libya in the hope of reaching Europe. That same afternoon, Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announced that his country would suspend asylum applications for the next three months.

Critics argue that the pause has no basis in Greek, European Union, or international law. In the immediate term, it will have devastating consequences for asylum seekers. It further reveals Greece’s ongoing project of chiseling away at the right to asylum, until only dust is left.

In the Greek Parliament on Wednesday afternoon, Mitsotakis linked the suspension to an increase in arrivals of asylum seekers on the southernmost Greek islands of Gavdos and Crete. He commented: “This extraordinary situation requires extraordinary measures to deal with it.”