Tempi / Large gathering at OSE in Thessaloniki – “It’s going to be a disgusting cover-up”

Mass rally protesting the Tempe train crash which cost the lives of 57 of our fellow human beings and marks one year today, was held on Wednesday afternoon by Thessaloniki’s labor unions at the Thessaloniki New Railway Station, while a march through the streets of the city then began.

A year after tragedy of Tempe, the central demand of the demonstrators was to render justice to the memory of the victims and not to masking.

Some of them were holding banner with slogans, while others had printed on them photos of the victims of the tragedy. “Our dead, their profits,” read one of the banners they were holding, local media reported.

Speeches were made by representatives of workers’ unions and also by the survivor of the Tempe accident Evies Tsapari, which emphasized:

“It is something that will not leave my mind. The images of people to they scream, to ask for help. Let us be in the blood, seeing fires and not knowing what to do. I want to ask not to we only remember today let’s not forget it until tthose responsible are inoculated. What is going to happen is a disgusting cover up that we will never find our right, nor we who see nightmares nor those parents of the people who perished because of it state he didn’t do his job properly. Support us because it could be any of us».

THE representative of railway Theodore Varydakis he declared from the podium that “they (the government) knew about it crime in Tempe and they still know. They knew and know about what has afflicted the people and then Tempi. It is their choice to kill us. Well, it won’t pass them!”

“Today we gave our fight and our answer to those who for their profits are killing us. Today we join our fight with them students and farmers. Against privatization of universities, the railway network, the dissolution of the peasantry. The struggle continues more massively, more competitively, inside the workplaces,” said the member of the railway workers’ union.

At the gathering, the names of 57 victims while at the entrance of the station there was an ongoing action with the walling 57 notes which read “pick me up when you arrive”.

Just before them 8 march started from OSE towards the city center.

With their banners the assembled are asking justice for the victims of the accident, not to exist masking and to render all the responsibilities to the authorities. There are parallel banners of railway workers, against the privatization of railways and students opposing the establishment of private universities. Also, banners and placards with images of the dead from Tempi are held by their relatives and friends, while at the gathering there are also survivors of the accident.

Strong MAT forces followed the march with the protesters denouncing the event, stressing that they were at the head of the march relatives of victims and survivors.

Earlier 57 empty chairs with a lit candle in each they have placed next to the Statue of Venizelos the members of the Dance Teachers Association of Thessaloniki. it is about a symbolic action for Tempi and I invited the passers-by to sit for a few minutes in one of the seats. “57 chairs that must not be emptied for as many hours as a fulfilled trip would last”note features.