Students and schoolchildren take to streets over rail disaster
Students and schoolchildren in various parts of the country have taken to the streets to express their anger and grief at Tuesday’s railway disaster in Tempi. in which at least 57 people, most of them students, lost their lives.
Not far from the hospital in Larissa, where the dead and injured from the accident were taken, several thousand school children gathered in protest in a central square, chanting “You never arrived, we will avenge you!”
Protests also took place in central Athens. “This tragedy has shocked us all. It could have been me in those railcars. We need to do something,” said Maria, who is studying to be a primary schoolteacher at the University of Athens.
Students gathered today at the Propylaia – the historical university building in the center of the city – demanding responsibility for the Tempi disaster.
Holding white and black balloons with the message “Call me when you arrive” written on them, students said that they had become “the voice of all the dead.”
“Today is not an ordinary day. Today we are taking to the streets to demand that people be found responsible and that nothing be hidden for the Tempi tragedy,” said Angelos Thomopoulos, president of the surveyors student association.
He asked how it was possible for such a tragedy to happen event in 2023.
“Many of our fellow students never got to send a message to their parents that they had arrived,” said Katerina, a philosophy student, adding that she and all her fellow students were demanding accountability.
