Photos: Greeks strike to mark train crash anniversary and demand justice | Protests News

1000’s of hanging Greek employees and school college students have marched by central Athens to mark the first anniversary of the nation’s deadliest put together crash – and demand justice and higher pay rises.

The 24-hour strike on Wednesday halted rail corporations all through the nation and disrupted metropolis transport inside the Greek capital. Ships had been held up in ports near Athens as rail and hospital employees, ship and ferry crews and schoolteachers all walked off the job.

Just a few of those marching in Athens held up a black banner learning: “We don’t overlook – we demand justice.”

On February 28, 2023, a passenger put together from Athens to the northern metropolis of Thessaloniki collided head-on with a freight put together, killing 57 of us and stirring mass protests over what many thought-about because the outcomes of a very long time of neglect of the rail sector.

Church buildings all through the nation rang their bells 57 events on Wednesday, to characterize the number of these killed, quite a lot of them school college students returning residence after a protracted weekend.

The strike was often known as by Greece’s largest public sector union, ADEDY, which represents about half 1,000,000 employees.

Nonetheless completely different protesters joined the march, along with school college students, who wrote the names of the ineffective on the underside in entrance of the carefully guarded parliament.

There have been momentary clashes between police and protesters in Athens and in an identical protest in Thessaloniki.

Hours after remaining 12 months’s crash, a station grasp was arrested. Dozens of people have since been charged inside the case, at current beneath investigation by an space select. The federal authorities says a trial is extra prone to begin in June.

Nonetheless many survivors and victims’ relations said politicians, who’re protected beneath Greek regulation from prosecution with solely parliament ready to look at them, should additionally assume accountability for safety system deficiencies.

“Fifty-seven souls want justice,” be taught a placard on the web site of the crash inside the central Greek space of Tempi, the place grieving households and survivors held a memorial service, laying white flowers and wreaths.

“Greece mustn’t ever experience as soon as extra such a blow to safety and residents’ confidence,” President Katerina Sakellaropoulou said.

After the crash, the conservative authorities had promised to reform the railways and make them safer. Nonetheless a 12 months on, crash consultants and railway officers suggested the Reuters data firm that safety strategies are nonetheless not completely functioning.

“As a major minister, as a citizen and as a father, I share the nation’s grief,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised take care of on Wednesday, promising to heal the state’s persistent shortcomings.

“Our mission is to point out the ache into movement.”

Demonstrators moreover protested in opposition to what they said had been insufficient pay rises, the first after 14 years inside the public sector. They said the desire improve are normally not massive sufficient to offset the have an effect on of rising residing costs. Employees need a ten % across-the-board pay rise as an alternative and additional hiring.

Greece has been recovering from a decade-long debt catastrophe and three worldwide bailouts, which it acquired in return for lowering wages and scrapping trip bonuses inside the public sector.

The conservative authorities has elevated the minimal month-to-month wage by 20 % to 780 euros ($844) as a result of it took office in 2019 and has promised to raise it to 950 euros by 2027.

Nonetheless the nation’s month-to-month salaries nonetheless lag behind the European Union widespread.