Dozens of European Parliament lawmakers on Thursday called on the European Commission to conduct an independent investigation into a recent report that accused the Greek coast guard of causing the deaths of migrants with illegal pushbacks.

"The BBC revelations of the Hellenic Coast Guard’s direct role in migrants deaths as deliberate policy are chilling," Tineke Strik, a Dutch EP lawmaker for the Greens, said on X.

"Lack of EU action facilitates brutality," Strik said, attaching a letter addressed to European Commissioner Ylva Johansson and EU’s border protection agency Frontex’s executive director Hans Leijtens.

The letter, signed by Strik and 32 other EP members from Greens, socialist, leftist and liberal groups, demands Johansson to investigate whether EU funds or EU-funded ships are involved in the incidents and Leijtens to suspend Frontex operations in Greece.

"This growing evidence of systematic violations, linking the actions of the Greek coast guard directly to the deaths of migrants as a coordinated and deliberate policy of deterrence of arrivals, should be highly alarming to both the EU Commission and Frontex," the letter read.

A BBC report on Monday alleged that the deaths of 43 migrants in 15 incidents between May 2020 and May 2023 were the direct result of the actions of the Greek coast guard in the Aegean Sea.

The BBC investigation cited interviews with eyewitnesses following reports from media, charities and the Turkish Coast Guard Command.

It said the BBC showed a former coast guard employee a video of 12 migrants being put on the Greek coast guard boat and then left on an inflatable raft during the interviews.

When there was a break, the former employee, thinking the microphone was off, made a phone call to someone and said in Greek: "I don’t know why they did this in broad daylight. It is absolutely illegal and an international crime."

Greece is a major gateway for migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia seeking a better life in the affluent EU. Thousands slip into the country every year, mostly in small boats from neighboring Türkiye.

Relations with Türkiye are often tense, and the Turkish coast guard has repeatedly accused the Greek side of mistreating migrants.

Migrant charities and human rights groups too repeatedly accused Greece's coast guard and police of illegally preventing arriving migrants from seeking asylum via Turkish waters.

Greece has angrily denied the accusations, arguing its border forces have saved hundreds of thousands of migrants from sinking boats.

The country's reputation was further damaged in June 2023 when a battered fishing vessel with an estimated 750 people on board sank.

Only 104 people survived, despite the Greek coast guard having shadowed the vessel for hours, and the trawler sank after a botched attempt by the coast guard to tow it. Greek authorities again denied these allegations.

The new BBC report included a claim by a Cameroonian man that he and two other migrants were picked up by masked men, including police, just after landing on the island of Samos.

The man claimed all three were put in a coast guard boat and thrown into the sea, and that the other two men drowned as a result.

The report also quoted a Syrian man who said he was part of a group picked up at sea by the Greek coast guard off Rhodes. He said the survivors were put in life rafts and left adrift in Turkish waters, where several died after one life raft sank before the Turkish Coast Guard Command came to pick them up.

‘Unprecedented’ brutality

Greek government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis insisted on Monday that there was no evidence to support the allegations in the BBC report.

Pointing out a New York Times investigation in May 2023 and an ongoing EU probe into the July 2023 incident where over 600 migrants were killed after a boat capsized off the coast of Pylos, the EP lawmakers’ letter stressed that "lack of accountability thus far has allowed this alleged misconduct to continue and reach unprecedented levels of brutality."

The Turkish coast guard on Friday said it rescued 27 migrants, including 10 children, from two life rafts after the Greek coast guard pushed them back toward the coast of Marmaris district in the Muğla province.

Reports of pushbacks involving Frontex and the Greek coast guard first appeared in headlines in 2020, claiming that Frontex was turning a blind eye while Greek coast guard boats were blocking, damaging, and even sinking migrant boats trying to cross from Türkiye to Greece.

While EU probes concluded that Frontex and its executives didn’t prevent basic rights violations, allegations continued, backed by eyewitnesses, video records and satellite footage. Frontex is said to have records in its database of hundreds of migrants being pushed back in the Aegean Sea.