ATHENS (Reuters) – Air, sea and train transport was halted and mass protests were planned in Greece on Friday in anger over a perceived lack of justice two years after the country’s worst-ever train crash killed 57 people.
A passenger train filled with students collided with a freight train on February 28, 2023, near the Tempi gorge in central Greece. Two years later, the safety gaps that caused the crash have not been filled, an inquiry found on Thursday. A separate judicial investigation remains unfinished and no one has been convicted in the accident.
That exasperates many in Greece, where mistrust of government is rife following a 2009-2018 debt crisis in which millions lost out on wages and pensions, and public services suffered from underfunding.
All international and domestic flights were grounded as air traffic controllers joined seafarers, train drivers, doctors, lawyers and teachers in a 24-hour general strike to pay tribute to the victims of the crash. Businesses were shut, theatres cancelled performances and thousands were expected to take to Syntagma Square in central Athens and to the streets of cities, under heavy police watch.
GSEE, the biggest private-sector union, said it had called the strike “so that the rule of law can finally be implemented; so that there is no cover-up; so that those responsible are punished”.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ centre-right government, which won re-election after the crash in 2023, has faced repeated criticism by relatives of the victims for failing to initiate a parliamentary inquiry into political responsibility.
The government denies wrongdoing and says it is up to the judiciary to investigate the accident.
In a survey carried out this week by Pulse pollsters, 82% of Greeks said the train disaster was “one of the most” or “the most” important issue in the country and 66% said they were dissatisfied with the investigations into the accident.
Opposition parties have accused the government of covering up evidence and urged it to step down.
Mitsotakis warned against violence during the Friday protests, saying provocative online posts aimed to create political instability.
(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris and Angeliki Koutantou. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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