A demonstration was held in Nicosia’s central Eleftheria square on Sunday over the train crash which killed 57 people between the Greek villages of Tempi and Evangelismos on the mainline between Athens and Thessaloniki.
Nicosia was one of 130 locations across the world which saw demonstrations take place on Sunday, with Athens, Thessaloniki, other places in Greece, as well as London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Barcelona all seeing people gather.
Athens’ central Syntagma square was packed with demonstrators, while people gathered at Thessaloniki’s Arch of Galerius and in other town and city centres across Greece, with demonstrations taking place under the slogan “I have no oxygen”.
Attendees held placards bearing the names and ages of the 57 people who died in what was the deadliest railway accident in Greek history, while others held banners demanding justice, and photographs of the two Cypriots, Kyprianos Papaioannou and Anastasia Adamidou, who were killed in the incident.
A resolution was held out at the demonstration, which stated that attendees were there “to honour the memory of the people who were lost and to demand justice”.
“The tragedy in Tempi was not an accident. It was a crime born of indifference, irresponsibility, and corruption – a crime which must not go unpunished,” the resolution stated.
It added that it is “unacceptable that 30 people who survived the fatal collision were burned alive because of an illegal chemical cargo which no one cared to check”.
It thus called for an immediate and independent investigation into the explosion which occurred after the crash, adding that “explanations are also required from the institutions before they assume any other office which will allow them to continue their policy of covering things up”.
“Today, in every corner of the planet where there are Greeks, the people say enough is enough, we have no more oxygen to continue to tolerate crimes without punishment. We have no more room for silence and complicity,” the resolution said.
It added that the fight which the protestors are waging is “not only for the dead, but for the living, who deserve a better future, and for the children who should not grow up in a country where human life has less value than profit”.
The incident occurred on the mainline between Athens and Thessaloniki, with a passenger train colliding head-on with a cargo train, throwing entire carriages off the tracks.
The trains were engulfed in flames, with temperatures reaching as high as 1,300 degrees Celsius, with some passengers being flung as far as 40 metres upon impact.
Greece and then Cyprus declared three-day mourning periods in the aftermath of the crash.
Last week, an expert report found that 10 tonnes of highly flammable aromatic hydrocarbons were present on the cargo train, and that it was the explosion of that flammable liquid which caused the deaths of 30 people who had survived the initial impact.
