the anger spreads throughout the country, tens of thousands of people in the streets

The anger does not weaken in Greece. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Wednesday March 8 after the train disaster that killed 57 people on February 28. A call for a strike in a large part of the public and private sectors also brings the country almost to a standstill.

In Athens, at least 40,000 people marched in the middle of the day, according to a police spokeswoman, while they were 15,000 in Thessaloniki, the country’s second city. In the Athenian procession flourished signs calling for the resignation of the government of the conservative Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose management of this accident is considered calamitous.

Many Greeks are expressing bitterness at what they see as a decline in public services since the austerity plans imposed by Greece’s creditors to pull the country out of the doldrums.

“Call me when you arrive”

In Athens, where several parades, some marked by violence, have already taken place since the train accident, banners also indicated: “Call me when you arrive”. This slogan, which refers to the message that Greek parents usually send to their children, has spread in rallies and schoolyards.

Without any alert being triggered, two trains, one passenger, the other freight, traveled for several kilometers on the same track before colliding head-on on February 28 around 11:30 p.m., in Tempé, near the town of Larissa, 350 km north of the capital. Since what the authorities described as “national tragedy”the Greeks hold their leaders accountable.