Greeks across the world have taken to the streets to demand justice for the 57 victims of the country’s deadliest rail disaster in 2023.
Protests took place in 110 cities on Sunday, including 13 locations abroad.
The largest marches, with about 30,000 taking part in each, took place in Greece’s two largest cities, Athens and Thessaloniki. They were mostly peaceful, although in each city, small groups of people attacked police forces with rocks and flares. Police responded with tear gas and flash-bang grenades. The clashes only lasted a few minutes.
In London, about 500 people demonstrated outside the Greek Embassy in the Holland Park neighborhood. More protests were staged in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Cologne, Helsinki, London, Nicosia, Reykjavik and Valetta, Malta.
The protesters, called to demonstrate by victims’ relatives, held placards and chanted “I have no oxygen,” a phrase reportedly uttered by a victim, still alive, who called the 112 European emergency number to report the incident. Another placard, seen in Thessaloniki, accused the state, the conservative government and the European Commission of having blood on their hands.
“What is happening today is majestic,” Pavlos Aslanidis, the father of a victim, told media in Thessaloniki. “This is now a global fight,” he added, referring to the protests abroad. “Μy son’s soul must be elated … I believe we will win. We have the state ranged against us, but we will win.”
The marchers accused the government of hiding significant evidence, running an opaque investigation and trying to blame the disaster on a stationmaster’s bad decisions.
The disaster happened on the night of Feb. 28, 2023 when a north-bound passenger train collided with a southbound freight train, which had been placed mistakenly on the same track.
A combination of anger, anguish over the deaths of mostly young people and a desire to make political capital out of the tragedy has given play to a series of rumors about the accident.
Many believe that at least 30 of the 57 victims survived the initial impact only to die in a fire started not by the high-speed crash but,…
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