THE illegal practice of forcibly returning refugees across borders, known as pushback, continued unabated in Greece last year, an independent human rights organisation says in a report published today.

The report, by Mare Liberum, a charity that monitors the Greek coastguard’s treatment of refugees in the Aegean Sea, contains testimonies from some of those who say they were beaten, tortured and abused by Greek coastguard personnel and others who were forced onto life rafts and abandoned at sea.

“They strip-searched us naked in the forest…,” one of the testimonies says.

“You undress and they searched your private parts, including your inners. The same method applied to everybody, including the pregnant woman.”

The Turkish coastguard conducted 18 rescues in the Aegean of small groups of people who had been thrown into the sea, reportedly by their Greek counterparts, last year and managed to swim to shore, the report says.

Mare Liberum warns that, despite international criticism of the Greek state’s alleged used of pushbacks, there appears to be “no end to this illegal practice.”

Saskia Berger, a Mare Liberum member and one of the authors of the report, said: “As long as the EU does not make real efforts to investigate, sanction and prevent these human rights violations, Greece urgently needs an independent monitoring mechanism at its borders.

“In the end, safe flight routes are the only way to prevent the violence and deaths in the Aegean Sea, the central Mediterranean and at all the other EU external borders.”