Thousands of people across Greece will demonstrate Saturday in solidarity with victims of the country’s worst train tragedy, which claimed 57 lives in 2023 and rattled the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
With a long-awaited trial into the disaster looming in March, unanswered questions remain about the accident and the ensuing investigation, which victims’ relatives say was deficient and left state officials largely untouched.
Most of those killed in the crash on February 28, 2023 were young students aboard a passenger locomotive carrying some 350 people from Athens to Thessaloniki that hit a freight train in the dead of the night.
The crash was “not a stroke of bad luck,” an association of victims’ relatives said in a statement ahead of the Saturday demonstrations.
“It was an expression of an inhuman policy that, in the face of profitability and profit, does not even take human life into account, a policy that breeds and covers up crimes.”
More than 300,000 people rallied to mark last year’s anniversary, one of the biggest demonstrations the country has seen since the decade-long financial crisis which began in late 2009.
This year will see demonstrations in more than 70 towns and cities across Greece.
Unions have kicked off a series of strikes, and there will be no trains or ferry services on Saturday, while stores in the capital Athens are urged to close.
The two trains had run on the same track for more than 10 minutes without triggering any alarm, laying bare the parlous state of the Greek railway network’s security fail-safes — despite European Union grants for their modernisation.
European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kovesi last year noted that the accident could have been avoided if an EU-funded railway signalling project had been completed on time.
The victims’ families have protested that valuable clues were lost when the crash site was bulldozed soon after the accident, sparking allegations the government was literally trying to bury the evidence.
– Push for change –
Several parents have also demanded tests to determine whether their children were killed by the collision, or by a fire that broke out afterwards, with one going on a hunger strike last year.
Earlier this month, experts appointed by the families said the passenger train had poorly-insulated seating that enabled the fire to spread.
Despite the disaster, Mitsotakis comfortably won re-election just months later, and went on to defeat two votes of no confidence on the issue.
But anger continues to simmer, increasing support for smaller opposition parties, including one headed by a leading lawyer for the accident victims.
The mother of another victim, Maria Karystianou, has announced plans for a new party.
“We don’t just want to remain a protest movement. We really want to see some things change in the country,” Karystianou told AFP in an interview this week.
Nearly 40 people will go on trial on March 23, including railway executives and the station master on duty that night. They risk prison sentences of up to 20 years.
Two former ministers, including the ex-transport minister, were also referred to justice by parliament, but face only misdemeanour charges at present.
The European prosecutor has separately charged more than 30 individuals with various offences, including subsidy fraud.
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