There have been big protests in Athens, Greece for the past few months. Since the train crash in Tempi, that took the lives of 57 people, the greek public sphere has been indulged in an out of this world game of cat and mouse, the cat being the families of the people killed in the train and mouse being the truth.
Since the begining everything in the investigation of how the crash happened and who was responsible, has gone wrong. Even before every important clues were rescued, buldozers and people were already heavily contaminating the scene. It was done in ways that never met even the lowest of protocol standards and the people who wanted to know what happened to their loved ones were tasked to solve a mystery ,that first out of anyone, the greek prime minister came out to clear any suspicions of foul play, by commenting on TV that “we know exactly what the containers of the commercial train were holding” and by puting all the blame on the “personal mistake” of the one and only train driver (there were supposed to be two of them), thought that this would sound legit to the families and the greek public. Well it didnt.
There has been many evidence of false reports, one page investigations done by the responsible authorities, people in high places giving direct orders to the field and many other moves that might start conspiracy theories, as the government would put it.
There had been deadly accidents of important witnesses, other witnesses not being called by the investigators, videos missing, montaged audio files, laws were changed as to soften any blowback and lastly a clear dissatisfaction of the ruling party, blaming the victims families, and generally being insensitive, to put it mildly.
Two years later, there is still no justice.
No clear answers.
And two million people protesting at the two year anniversary in all of the big and mid sized cities of greece, and even protests all over the world.
The protests were not just about the Tempi crash. The were against the government, against the way has been run by any of the ruling parties, being right, center or left. There have been many scandals and crimes committed by politicians in the past too, but there have been only two people ever put in prison for any political scandal, so people are fed up with it. Imagine that people caught throwing stones at police were charged with a felony, but the politicians who gave the orders for destroying all evidence of the crime scene, is getting a misdemeanor.
People are charging the government of trying to cover up everything, and it is very obvious what it is happening…
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Not commenting on the protests in Greece but they line up nicely with the current protests happening in Serbia for pretty similar reasons. A roof at a train station in Novi Sad collapsed in November 2024 and killed 15 people possibly (or most likely) caused by corruption and ignoring construction standards.
Citizens demanding thorough investigations but getting the usual bullshit from government officials caused a wave of protests rarely seen before. It started with student protests but it quickly spread through all levels of society including strikes and some officials resigning. Interesting times indeed.
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