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

1000’s of hanging Greek staff and college students have marched by central Athens to mark the primary anniversary of the nation’s deadliest prepare crash – and demand justice and greater pay rises.

The 24-hour strike on Wednesday halted rail companies throughout the nation and disrupted city transport within the Greek capital. Ships had been held up in ports close to Athens as rail and hospital staff, ship and ferry crews and schoolteachers all walked off the job.

A few of these marching in Athens held up a black banner studying: “We don’t overlook – we demand justice.”

On February 28, 2023, a passenger prepare from Athens to the northern metropolis of Thessaloniki collided head-on with a freight prepare, killing 57 folks and stirring mass protests over what many considered as the results of a long time of neglect of the rail sector.

Church buildings throughout the nation rang their bells 57 occasions on Wednesday, to characterize the variety of these killed, a lot of them college students returning residence after a protracted weekend.

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

However different protesters joined the march, together with college students, who wrote the names of the useless on the bottom in entrance of the closely guarded parliament.

There have been temporary clashes between police and protesters in Athens and in an analogous protest in Thessaloniki.

Hours after final 12 months’s crash, a station grasp was arrested. Dozens of individuals have since been charged within the case, at present beneath investigation by an area choose. The federal government says a trial is more likely to start in June.

However many survivors and victims’ relations stated politicians, who’re protected beneath Greek regulation from prosecution with solely parliament in a position to examine them, must also assume accountability for security system deficiencies.

“Fifty-seven souls need justice,” learn a placard on the website of the crash within the central Greek area of Tempi, the place grieving households and survivors held a memorial service, laying white flowers and wreaths.

“Greece mustn’t ever expertise once more such a blow to security and residents’ confidence,” President Katerina Sakellaropoulou stated.

After the crash, the conservative authorities had promised to reform the railways and make them safer. However a 12 months on, crash consultants and railway officers advised the Reuters information company that security methods are nonetheless not totally functioning.

“As a primary minister, as a citizen and as a father, I share the nation’s grief,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated in a televised deal with on Wednesday, promising to heal the state’s persistent shortcomings.

“Our mission is to show the ache into motion.”

Demonstrators additionally protested in opposition to what they stated had been inadequate pay rises, the primary after 14 years within the public sector. They stated the will increase are usually not large enough to offset the affect of rising residing prices. Staff desire a 10 % across-the-board pay rise as a substitute and extra hiring.

Greece has been recovering from a decade-long debt disaster and three worldwide bailouts, which it acquired in return for reducing wages and scrapping vacation bonuses within the public sector.

The conservative authorities has elevated the minimal month-to-month wage by 20 % to 780 euros ($844) because it took workplace in 2019 and has promised to elevate it to 950 euros by 2027.

However the nation’s month-to-month salaries nonetheless lag behind the European Union common.