Tens of thousands of Greeks gathered in front of the Parliament in Athens on Sunday demanding Justice for the 57 victims of the train disaster in Tempi. With the slogan “I Have No Oxygen” rallies were held also in over 150 cities across Greece but also in 13 cities abroad.
Syntagma Square – Athens
Berlin
Brussels
Victims’ families, relatives and friends, but also average people with no connection to the victims, parents with their children, young and old, workers, students, people from all the parts of the society and without particular ideologies joined their voices demanding finally Justice for the victims, the majority of them being students going home or to their schools after a long weekend on 28. February 2023.
Participants of the mostly silent protest were holding placards with the names and the age of the victims and occasionally shouted “Murderers! Murderers!”
The call for the protests was initiated by the association of victims’ families after the release of a heartbreaking audio recording between initial crash survivors and the operator of <112> emergency line.
The recording indicated that some 30 of the 57 victims were suffocated or burned to death after an explosion took place in the freight train that had collided with the passenger one. therefore also the slogan ” I Have No Oxygen”.
Association of victims families: We Were All Inside the Train”
Maria Karystianou, the chairwoman of the association of families of Tempe victims, addressed the gathering, thanking the attendees. She described the incident as part of a “mafia-style operation to cover up the truth” and presented a detailed timeline of events following the disaster.
“We want to ensure that no crime goes unpunished,” she concluded, adding, “Thank you all, we will succeed.”
Dimitris Vervesos, President of the Athens Bar Association, also addressed the crowd, stating: “We are here searching for oxygen. We are here to leave behind the era of cover-ups.”
Toward the end of the protest at 2 p.m., police fired tear gas to disperse the huge crowd, after a group wearing hoodies hurled Molotov cocktail bombs and stones at riot police. Minor clashes took place and the tension was moved to surrounding streets.
Clashes , Molotov cocktail bombs, garbage bins on fire and tear gas were recorded also in Greece’s second biggest city Thessaloniki where also a huge rally took place.
Large crowds of people were also gathered in protests also in the big cities of Crete, in Patras, Larissa and many other cities across the country.
Opposition parties supported the Call for Justice and issued storng statements on Sunday calling on the government to refrain from cover-up and delay efforts and proceed with the complete investigation of the case and to indict those truly responsible for the disaster.
pictures: newsit.gr, efsyn.gr, X users #Tempi_Crime, #Syntagma
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BRAVO – Feeling proud is rare these days, but the courage and determination of all those who will not let this coverup succeed gives hope.
This must be properly investigated and ALL those responsible held to account.
Bravo Greece. Keep it up!
Well…good they did it…BUT…what is the government doing? Will they react of the protesters? Will it change anything??? No. Unfortunately. And this is repeating every year and nothing will change…Unfortunately!
It is because the democratic system is flawed. There is no government accountability if parliamentarians need to tow the party line and if the courts are not powerful enough or too corrupt to hold government accountable. Perhaps the Trias Politics were designed that way and democracy is just a ruse.