More than 15,000 people participated today in new protests in Athens, triggered by the train accident in which 57 people died, on February 28, and the protesters blamed the Government for the deterioration of the infrastructure.
Thousands of workers and students marched, according to the police, through the center of the Greek capital to demand justice and denounce the privatization policies of the railway sector.
“Privatizations cost lives” and “You are murderers,” read banners held by protesters outside the Greek Parliament.
Traffic was cut in several central streets of Athens and metro stations were also closed.
“We are not going to leave them alone. We are not going to let this crime be forgotten,” said the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Dimitris Kutsumbas, who participated in the protest.
In Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, thousands of university students and workers also took to the streets to protest against government policies.
Greece has been experiencing massive protests for almost two weeks due to the accident that occurred on the night of February 28, when a passenger train collided head-on with a freight train north of the city of Larissa, killing 57 people, most of them university students. students.
The mobilizations will continue next week, within the framework of a 24-hour general strike called for Thursday by the public and private sector unions, and whose main demand is that the “true culprits” of Larisa’s “crime” be found. .
Last Wednesday, more than 40,000 people, according to the police, and up to 60,000, according to some media, demonstrated in Athens as part of a general strike in the public sector, one of the largest mobilizations in recent years in the country.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis took political responsibility for the accident and acknowledged that there were no safety measures on the section where the disaster occurred that could have prevented it.
So far, four employees of the state railway company OSE have been charged, including a station master who admitted to the prosecutor that he put the passenger train on the same track as a freight train coming from the opposite direction.
The accident and the wave of public outrage it unleashed come less than two months before the general elections, the date of which has not yet been set, although, according to the Greek press, the most likely day for it to be held is May 21.
Source: TSF
