Students sit-ins, protests over Greek train tragedy
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LARISSA, Greece – Thousands of Greek students staged sit-ins and demonstrated in Athens and other cities on Friday to demand justice for the victims of the country’s worst train tragedy.
Greek railway workers meanwhile extended their strike to a second day on Friday amid anger over the disaster.
In the capital, some 2,000 people gathered in the city centre to protest failures by successive governments to improve rail network safety, despite calls in past years.
The protesters – most of them university students of similar ages to the crash victims – were to head also to the headquarters of the train’s operating company Hellenic Train.
“They were young like ourselves,” Aphrodite, a 20-year-old biology student told AFP during the Athens protest.
Another protester, Maria Psacheli, said her own child was a frequent traveller on the same route to go to university.
“I’m thinking of the victims’ families,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Similar protests were to be held in Larissa – near the site of Tuesday’s disaster – Thessaloniki, Patras and other cities.
A message attributed to a young victim’s mother – ‘Text me when you get there’ – is on banners carried by the demonstrators, and has appeared prominently as a protest slogan in past days. Many protesters carried black flags.
Opposition politicians have also started to voice criticism.
“Any effort to hide and cover up the truth over the Tempi tragedy is disrespecting the dead and foretelling new tragedies,” said a spokesman for the leftwing Syriza, Greece’s main opposition party.
Before the crash, the government had said that elections would be held in the spring, with media citing April 9 as the most likely date. Political analysts say that plan might now be pushed back.
At least 57 people died on Tuesday when a passenger train collided with a freight train
There were over 350 people on board the passenger train and many are still unaccounted for.
Most of the victims were students in their 20s returning from a long weekend.
Students and pupils were staging sit-ins in over two dozen university faculties and schools around the country.
Black sheets were draped at the entrances of several universities.
In Larissa, white roses were thrown at the tracks of the local train station.
The 59-year-old Larissa station master was arrested and has admitted to some responsibility, his lawyer said, while stressing he was not the only one to blame.
“The federation has been sounding alarm bells for so many years, but it has never been taken seriously,” the main railworkers’ union said, demanding a meeting with the new transport minister, appointed after the crash with a mandate to ensure such a tragedy can never happen again.
The union said it wanted a clear timetable for the implementation of safety protocols. Questions around the crash involve faulty signalling and maintenance issues.
Work resumed at the crash site, where rescue staff used cranes to lift some of the carriages that were thrown off the tracks – which could be wrapped up on Friday.
“The operation is under way, it was planned to end today, we hope it will end today but there’s always the unknown factor,” a fire brigade official said.
On Thursday, outside the hospital in Larissa, where many of the victims were brought, a woman called Katerina, whose brother was missing, screamed: “Murderers! Murderers! I will leave tomorrow with a coffin!”
Ms Katerina, whose anger was directed at the government and the rail company, had, like other relatives looking for loved ones, given a DNA sample to try and identify her brother.
A woman whose husband and five-year-old son were on the train told Greek TV: “All those people who are there, they’re useless, useless. Some MPs are coming out and offering condolences, so what? Will it bring our children back?”
Asked if she gave DNA for identification, she said, on footage broadcast by Mega TV: “To identify what, ashes?” REUTERS, AFP
