More than 2,000 people observed a minute’s silence in front of the Athens parliament on Friday for the 57 fatalities of the rail disaster that occurred on Tuesday, an accident that caused consternation but also protests demanding answers from the Greek authorities.
In a country that has been in national mourning for three days, and after this minute of remembrance, a protest began under the slogan “We mourn our dead, we demand the truth”, with the protesters heading to the headquarters of the Hellenic Greek private railway company. Train, accused of numerous negligence and defects that are allegedly at the origin of this accident that shakes Greece.
In the Greek capital, protesters carried black balloons in memory of the victims, including many students who could not resist the collision of the two trains.
Also today most of the Greek universities were closed.
“This crime should not be swept under the rug” or “Send me a message when you arrive”, alluding to the testimony of a mother whose son died in the accident, were some of the phrases on the banners displayed at the protest. .
On the third day of national mourning, the Greeks are demanding answers from the authorities, despite the fact that the government has admitted “chronic” failures in the rail network that caused the accident.
According to the Athenian daily Efimerida ton Syntakton, and after the privatization of the Hellenic railway network during the “debt crisis” and the intervention of the international troika of creditors in the first half of the 2010s, neither the government nor businessmen agreed to invest in renovating an outdated rail system.
The newspaper indicated that the wagons were bought from Switzerland, which made them available as they were considered problematic. The same newspaper reported that the accident was the result of a chaotic privatization of the railway network, considering that it was not essentially a human error, as the conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis has suggested.
The title also advanced that the father-in-law of Georgios Gerapetritis – the new transport minister appointed by Mitsotakis after the resignation of his predecessor Kostas Karamanlis, nephew of the former Greek conservative prime minister of the same name – is the holder of all contracts with Hellenic Train.
The newspaper also pointed out that the son of the attorney general in charge of the investigation is the lawyer of Georgios Gerapetritis, who resigned after the disaster, at a time when the Government tries to attribute almost total responsibility to the head of the Larissa railway station, meanwhile arrested.
At the same time, a judicial source cited by the AFP news agency indicated that the ongoing investigation aims to “initiate criminal proceedings, if necessary, against members of the company’s management” Hellenic Train.
The same source confirmed that “audio files, documents and other evidence that could help to clarify this case and assign criminal responsibilities were seized” at the Larissa police station, after a police raid.
The purpose of this announced operation is to determine the “possible causes” of the brutal crash on Tuesday, on the same line, of the train that made the connection between Athens and Thessaloniki (north) and a composition of merchandise.
In Larissa, the city closest to the accident, and in Patras, a university city in the Peloponnese, hundreds of demonstrators also gathered today in a protest action.
A demonstration is scheduled for this afternoon in Thessaloniki, the country’s second city, where many victims continued their studies.
For the second consecutive day, the strike in the railway sector continues, denouncing the union confederation “the lack of respect of the governments over time for the Greek railways”, a position that, according to the collective, “caused this disaster”.
The Greek population wants to understand why a train carrying 342 passengers in ten carriages could use the same single track, where a freight train was running in the opposite direction.
A demonstration took place in Thessaloniki on Thursday night, which ended in clashes with police forces.
In court, the Larissa station manager, accused of “culpable homicide” and “bodily harm”, confessed his “mistake”. The railway employee risks a life sentence if he is proven guilty.
Several ‘media’, including public television ERT, pointed out the inexperience of the official, since he was appointed to the position just 40 days ago, after a job at the Ministry of Education and a three-month training course.
Trade union organizations in the sector have long called for the hiring of permanent staff, better training and, in particular, the adoption of modern security technologies, but these demands have never been met.
In this context, Kostas Genidounia, president of the OSE railway conductors union, questioned the lack of safety on the line where the accident occurred.
“All signage is done manually. Since the year 2000 the systems do not work ”, he revealed.
Three weeks ago, the union representatives of the Hellenic Train company had already sounded the alarm.
“We cannot wait for an accident to occur to see those responsible shed crocodile tears,” they warned at the time, but to no avail.
In Athens, hundreds of people also demonstrated Thursday night outside the headquarters of Hellenic Train, a company acquired in 2017 as part of the privatization program demanded by Greece’s international creditors during the “debt crisis” between 2009 and 2018.
Source: TSF
