In response to Greece’s deadliest rail accident, which left scores of people dead last month, thousands of people have demonstrated in central Athens.
The demonstrators demanded justice for those accountable for the February 28 head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train that left 57 people dead and expressed outrage about safety flaws in Greece’s rail system. More than 8,000 protesters gathered outside the Parliament in Athens on Sunday, according to the police.
With signs reading “We won’t forget, we won’t forgive” and “We will become the voice of all the dead,” protesters swarmed Syntagma Square in Athens.
Markella, a 65-year-old demonstrator from Athens who only used her first name, told the AFP news agency that “anger and hatred” had driven her to this location.
We’re growing desperate, said 26-year-old demonstrator Alexandros. All you can do is join the protest because you have no idea what to say or do.
Later, a march by the demonstrators was held in front of the offices of privatized train company Hellenic Train. The organization is not in charge of maintaining the railway system; Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, an Italian enterprise, has owned it since 2017. Maintenance is handled by the government-owned Hellenic Railways.
The message on the street today… was one of skepticism and confrontation towards the government, according to Al Jazeera’s John Psaropoulos, who was reporting from Athens.
Due to the protest, the authorities closed four metro stations on two lines that pass through the heart of Athens.
University students, a pro-communist union, and civil officials organized the demonstration.
Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece, had roughly 5,000 protesters.
The marches on Sunday, which went through without a hitch, didn’t draw as many people as comparable gatherings earlier in the week, when over 30,000 people showed up in Athens and over 20,000 in Thessaloniki.
The largest institution in Greece, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, held a memorial service for the 12 students who perished in the train accident.
The country’s transportation minister and senior railway authorities resigned the day after the collision, and a stationmaster accused of putting the trains on the same track has been charged with negligent homicide and other offenses.
On Thursday, workers in the public and private sectors are anticipated to strike once more.
The center-right administration of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been forced to take a defensive stance in the wake of revelations of significant safety flaws on Greece’s busiest rail line. He has promised that the government will fully cooperate with any legal investigation into the collision.
Several demonstrators have urged Mitsotakis to resign as he runs for reelection later this year.
He has faced criticism for first attributing the disaster to “human error” and blaming the stationmaster who was in charge at the time of the incident for accidentally routing the trains onto the same section of track.
But, the creaky, understaffed train network has been the subject of long-running warnings from railway unions.
The government “has been bending over backwards to please public opinion,” according to Al Jazeera’s Psaropoulos.
“The government only stated two days ago that it would pay for national pensions equivalent to about $1,800 per family for each of those 57 persons died,” he said.
“The government is attempting to convince the public that all preparations will have been taken to have full staffing and fully educated workers on stations and on trains by the end of the month when railways begin operating again, at least that is the official plan.
“By the end of the summer, the prime minister has pledged, he will have all those automated safety systems—automatic signaling, automatic breaking, and telemetry showing controllers where trains are and where they are going—installed throughout the system.”
Elections in Greece are scheduled for later this spring, and recent polls have revealed that the conservative government’s margin over the left-wing opposition has practically halved from polls taken before the catastrophe.
