Protesters hurled petrol bombs and set fire to trash cans in Athens on Friday as hundreds of thousands of Greeks went on strike and took to the streets in nationwide demonstrations on the second anniversary of the country’s deadliest train crash.
Fifty-seven people were killed when a passenger train filled with students collided with a freight train on February 28, 2023 in central Greece. The accident has become a painful emblem of the perceived neglect of the country’s infrastructure in the decades before the crash and the two years since.
“The government hasn’t done anything to get justice,” said Christos Main, 57, a musician at the Athens rally. “This wasn’t an accident, it was murder,” he said.
In one of the biggest protests in Greece in years, public services and many private businesses were brought to a halt and people poured into the streets of cities and towns chanting “murderers” against what they say is the state’s role in the disaster. The government denies wrongdoing.
A sea of people descended onto Athens’ Syntagma Square in front of parliament, where protesters spray-painted the names of the dead in red on the ground. The slogan “I have no oxygen” – a woman’s last words in a call to emergency services – echoed in chants across the country.
POLITICAL THREAT
The safety gaps that caused the crash have not been filled two years on, a state inquiry found on Thursday. A separate judicial investigation remains unfinished and no one has been convicted in the accident.
Opposition parties have accused the government of covering up evidence and urged it to step down. Next week, parliament is expected to debate whether to set up a committee to investigate possible political responsibility in the disaster.
Protestors said they have waited too long.
Anastasia Plakia, who lost two sisters and a cousin in the crash, posted a photo on Facebook of the four of them smiling together in a restaurant: “730 days without you; 730 days of sadness, pain and rage,” the post said.
