Mass protests across Greece to demand justice for Tempe train crash victims

Tens of thousands of Greeks have taken to the streets in 110 cities, including 13 locations abroad, to demand justice for the 57 victims of the country’s deadliest rail disaster in 2023.

The largest marches on Sunday took place in Greece’s two biggest cities, Athens and Thessaloniki. In London, about 500 people demonstrated outside the Greek Embassy in the Holland Park neighbourhood. More protests were staged in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Brussels, Belgium, Berlin and Cologne, Germany, Helsinki, Finland, London, United Kingdom, Nicosia, Cyprus, Reykjavik, Iceland, and Valletta, Malta.

A victim, who is still alive, reportedly yelled “I have no oxygen,” a phrase that a protester called the 112 European emergency number to report the collision between a northbound passenger train and a southbound freight train, which had been placed mistakenly on the same track, on February 28, 2023, near Tempe in central Greece.

The demonstrators accused the government of hiding significant evidence, running an opaque investigation and trying to blame the disaster on a stationmaster’s bad decisions.

Many people think that at least 30 of the 57 victims survived the initial collision, but that a fire, allegedly caused by dangerous chemicals being transported by freight train, started after the high-speed collision. Some claim that the government is trying to conceal the presence of chemicals on board.

The government denies the allegations.

Source: Aljazeera