A basic strike in Greece on Friday halted trains and ferries, grounded flights and disrupted public companies as hundreds of staff walked off the job on the second anniversary of Greece’s worst-ever train disaster.
The 24-hour walkout, known as by Greece’s two predominant labor unions, is the newest in a collection of public protests over a dragging judicial investigation into the crash, by which 57 folks have been killed. There’s nonetheless lingering anger in the country over the federal government’s failure to place any of its politicians beneath scrutiny over the lack of life.
Here’s what to know concerning the strike and the enduring anger over the accident.
What does the strike entail?
Rallies have been happening in Athens and throughout Greece, with protesters calling for these at fault within the crash to be punished and for rail security to be improved.
The strike includes public- and private-sector staff. A police official estimated that the Athens protest attracted at the least 180,000 folks, the most important demonstration within the Greek capital in years.
All industrial flights to and from Greek airports have been grounded, and no ferries or trains have been working. Restricted public transportation was working in Athens to permit demonstrators to get to the rally. Though taxi drivers joined the strike, some volunteers provided protesters free rides to rallies.
Colleges and hospitals have been additionally affected as lecturers and well being care staff joined the motion. Legal professionals and ambulance staff walked out, too, whereas many retailers closed. A number of common artists additionally canceled deliberate reveals.
The demonstration in Athens began peacefully, with households pushing kids in strollers and pensioners becoming a member of college students on the streets of the capital holding banners calling for “justice” and “the responsible to pay.” However violence erupted within the early afternoon after just a few hundred hooded youths broke away from the primary protest and threw firebombs and chunks of paving stone at law enforcement officials, who responded by firing tear fuel. The police arrested 41 folks.
As a helicopter circled overhead, folks ran via the streets to flee the acrid smoke whereas emergency staff carried a lady who was struggling to breathe out of the fray.
With the sq. outdoors Parliament resembling a conflict zone, elite presidential guards have been moved from their cubicles into the Parliament constructing, the place some members of the general public additionally took refuge.
What occurred within the practice accident?
On the night time of Feb. 28, 2023, a passenger practice and a freight practice collided head-on on a route linking Athens with the northern port of Thessaloniki. Lots of the 57 individuals who died within the crash have been young students returning from a holiday weekend.
On the time, the Greek authorities blamed human error, saying {that a} routing mistake by a station grasp had put the passenger practice onto the identical monitor as an oncoming freight practice. However additionally they admitted to shortfalls in Greece’s railway infrastructure and delays in putting in fashionable security methods that would have averted the catastrophe.
The lethal episode set off days of protests as folks demanded accountability and higher rail security.
Two years later, questions stay concerning the precise circumstances of the crash.
A report by an impartial rail and air investigation authority arrange after the tragedy, whose results were made public on Thursday, discovered that delays in putting in digital signaling and distant surveillance methods performed a key position within the collision, as did persistent understaffing and underfunding ensuing from cutbacks enforced throughout Greece’s decade-long monetary disaster.
The report additionally criticized the Greek authorities for flawed mapping of the crash web site, an element that it mentioned resulted within the lack of “doubtlessly very important info.”
Investigators added that an “monumental fireball” from the crash, which in all probability killed 5 to seven of the victims, might have been stoked by a “hitherto unknown gas.” They known as for additional investigation into that.
Polls performed in latest weeks confirmed that most individuals within the nation were unhappy with the federal government’s dealing with of the catastrophe.
Many also suspect a cover-up of who was accountable — a cost that the federal government denies, accusing opposition events of exploiting public sensitivities for political acquire.
How have the authorities responded?
Greece has made some progress in bettering railway security for the reason that crash. Greece’s infrastructure and transportation minister, Christos Staikouras, informed Greek tv on Thursday that fashionable alerts and distant surveillance methods had been added alongside the complete Athens-to-Thessaloniki route after the accident, with work ending by September 2023.
Nonetheless, a cyclone later that month broken the methods, leaving them not absolutely practical on “a major half” of that route. He mentioned that the injury could be repaired by the summer season of 2026 and that Greece was engaged on an plan agreed upon with the European Fee to enhance coaching for railway staff.
However the European Fee said in December that shortcomings persevered, together with a failure to adjust to a European Union rail security directive from 2016. “Shortcomings are systemic and in addition stem from a scarcity of security tradition inside the organizations concerned,” it mentioned.
The authorities have mentioned {that a} judicial investigation is constant into who could also be liable for the crash. The handfuls beneath investigation to date are largely railway officers.
The biggest burden has fallen on one individual: the station grasp, now 61, who’s accused of the routing mistake that put the passenger practice on the identical line because the freight practice.
He faces costs of endangering transportation security and a number of counts of negligent murder and bodily hurt. However many within the nation felt that he was scapegoated over systemic failures that have been accountable for the tragedy.
