Athens-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.
In the capital, over 5,000 people gathered outside the headquarters of operators Hellenic Train -- which took over network operations in 2017 -- to protest at decades of failure to improve rail network safety, despite close calls in past years.
“Murderers!” the crowd cried out as protesters daubed the word on the building’s glass facade in red.
“We are boiling with rage. It’s unacceptable for such a tragic event to happen in the year 2023,” said protester Angelos Thomopoulos.
“We are taking to the streets today... to demand that those responsible for this tragedy are held accountable and that nothing is covered up,” he told AFP. The protesters were mostly university students of similar ages to many of the victims of Tuesday’s crash -- the country’s worst rail tragedy. “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. Hundreds of people also demonstrated in Larissa -- near the site of the disaster, Patras and other cities. Later protests are scheduled in Athens and Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki.
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