Tempi Train Crash: Protests for Justice in Greece

On 28 February, massive protests erupted in Athens, Thessaloniki, Larissa, and in every other city and nearly every town in Greece, calling for justice. It was an event unlike any I’ve seen in my 61 years of life. The protests were international in scope: Greeks living abroad organized events commemorating the Tempi train crash in over a hundred cities in Europe and the US, as well as in Sydney, Zanzibar, Buenos Aires, Seoul, and even in Iceland’s Akureyri.

Equally unique in Greece’s post-dictatorship history was the general strike that took place on the same day, causing supermarkets and banks, bakeries, kiosks, hairdressers, night clubs, theatres, and patisseries to remain closed. All in all, more than a million people in Greece alone (a country with a population of over ten million) may have taken to the streets on the second anniversary of the Tempi train crash.

Calamity and Cover-Up

Just before midnight on 28 February 2023, the InterCity 62 collided head-on with a freight train on the Athens-Thessaloniki line south of the Tempi valley. Fifty-seven passengers died, many of them students, and more than 80 people were injured, several of them seriously. It was the worst railway accident in the country’s history.

Two years later, the victims’ families and the Greek public have many questions that remain unanswered. How was the collision even possible in such a well-structured railway network? Why was the explosion resulting from the collision so large? Could the freight train have been transporting some illegal, dangerous cargo? Who is responsible for the accident? Could something like this happen again?

Polls show that between 70 and 80 percent of the population are now convinced that the conservative government under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the New Democracy party had no interest in clarifying the causes of the accident. Instead, they worked to cover up many factors contributing to the accident: a railway signal that had been broken since 2019, delays in investing in the safety technology financed by the EU, the appointment of an unqualified supporter of the ruling party as stationmaster of Larissa, and the cargo carried by the freight train.

The government’s strategy of imposing a false dichotomy (Mitsotakis or chaos) missed the mark.

What is known for a fact is that directly following the horrific crash, the relevant authorities failed to act to secure the security camera footage and to conduct the necessary autopsies. In addition, approximately 300 cubic metres of soil were removed immediately following the collision and the area was filled with gravel. This made it impossible to prove whether the freight train that collided with the passenger train was carrying illegal, flammable material that could have caused the explosion.

Serious failures occurred not only at the level of the investigation, but also at the political level. The transport minister in charge at the time, Kostas Achilleos Karamanlis, a member of the conservative political dynasty of the same name, did indeed step down the day after the accident — but was allowed to run for parliament again two months later and was re-elected in his “dynastic district” of Serres. Karamanlis was greeted with a standing ovation by his fellow party members when he was selected to take part in a parliamentary committee investigating the train accident — a committee that could hardly be taken seriously. Since the ruling party held a majority in the committee, important witnesses were not allowed to testify, and in the end, two committee members were even appointed as ministers as a kind of reward for their cover-up work. The Mitsotakis regime considered the case to be closed.

The Struggle of the Victims’ Families

Family members of the victims, however, continued to fight for accountability and justice around the issue. They succeeded in mobilizing a Greek society already worn down by crises, first on 26 January and then again on 28 February of this year.

On 26 January, following the release of audio recordings proving that some who eventually died had lived for some time after the crash and could possibly have been saved, hundreds of thousands throughout the country demanded justice for the victims of the crash. The initial call for the protests was made by relatives of the victims and spread on social media. The citizens who heeded their call demonstrated their solidarity with cries of “We won’t forget, we won’t forgive”, “Justice!”, and “No cover-up”. These protests were the largest the country had seen in the last decade — until the protests of 28 February, also organized by victims’ relatives, broke this record once again.

The government’s attitude contributed to an increase in outrage, solidarity, and protest attendance. After the January protests, Prime Minister Mitsotakis gave an interview in which he amended his former statement blaming the train accident on “human failure” and admitted that the investigation was proceeding “at a slow pace”. Yet, due by his party’s low approval ratings — Metron Analysis reports that New Democracy is now polling at 22 percent after having won the June 2023 elections with 41 percent — his new-found modesty dissipated quickly. In a 16 February interview with the newspaper Kathimerini, he railed against those who he said had no faith in the justice system. Presenting himself as the defender of the judiciary, he accused the opposition parties of “instrumentalizing” the tragedy.

The prime minister’s new strategy was the same as his old one: to portray himself as standing for stability while his critics, the outraged protesters, and opposition parties stood for chaos. Some government ministers discouraged people from attending the demonstrations; foremost among them was the health minister, who repeatedly dismissed any and all critique as nonsense, populism, or stupidity. Pro-government media and loyalist internet trolls even attempted to discredit the victims’ relatives, maligning figures such as Maria Karystianou, president of the Association of Parents of the Victims of Tempi, who lost her daughter Marti in the accident. Somehow, they “overlooked” the fact that attacking a mother who has lost her child is, generally speaking, a bad idea.

Nearly all Greeks sense that their own children, grandchildren, or friends might have been on that train, which is one reason for the large outpouring of sympathy.

The government’s strategy of imposing a false dichotomy (Mitsotakis or chaos) therefore missed the mark. A huge number of people attended the 28 February demonstrations. Millions went without their day’s wage out of solidarity and the conviction that things could not continue “as usual”. Their message was clear: End the trivialization and the cover-up!

The question now is whether this message will reach its addressees and how they (the government in particular) will react. But the democratic opposition parties should also be listening and formulating an alternative plan, since 28 February may prove to be a turning point in the country’s history.

Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Meanwhile, cover-ups and failures of accountability have not been limited to the devastating Tempi train crash. On the contrary, the Mitsotakis government pursued the same tactic in the aftermath of the surveillance scandal that came to be known as “Greek Watergate” in the international press, as well as with the Pylos shipwreck. The Pylos disaster — in which more than 600 refugees drowned off the coast of the port city of Pylos on 14 June 2023, due in part to poor decision-making on the part of the Greek coastguard — was especially telling, because in that case too Greek authorities failed to conduct a thorough investigation into the maritime tragedy.

As for the wiretapping scandal, the Greek public has yet to receive an explanation as to why Nikos Androulakis, president of PASOK (the Panhellenic Socialist Movement), as well as a dozen ministers, multiple journalists, and even the military’s commander-in-chief were surveiled by the country’s secret service, EYP. This was by no means a coincidence, since the secret service was placed under the direct command of the head of government by a controversial reform passed in July 2019 with the votes of New Democracy immediately after the government took office. Nonetheless, the Greek judiciary ruled that the wiretapping had been purely coincidental. And on 30 July 2024, Supreme Court Prosecutor Georgia Adilini announced that her investigation had turned up “no proof” that politicians or state services had been involved in the purchase or use of the illegal Predator software that had been utilized for surveillance.

Citizens’ trust in the justice system had already been severely compromised before the prosecutor’s decision came down. According to a poll conducted for the Eteron Institute in July 2024 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the restoration of Greek democracy, a mere 29.4 percent of the population trusted the justice system. Since that date, trust in the judiciary may well have fallen even further.

One Crime Too Many

Neither the Pylos shipwreck catastrophe nor the wiretapping scandal led to massive protests — so what makes the Tempi train accident different?

The first and perhaps the biggest factor is that people feel a close connection to the victims of Tempi. Nearly all Greeks sense that their own children, grandchildren, or friends might have been on that train, which is one reason for the large outpouring of sympathy.

A second factor is that people lost their patience with the government, and turned instead to rage. People were simply no longer willing to tolerate the government’s arrogance and lies without putting up a fight. It is important to remember that the vast majority of Greece’s populace was yearning — after long years of constant crises: economic crisis, debt crisis, climate crisis, refugee crisis, Covid crisis — for stability and normalcy. The Mitsotakis government seemed to embody this normalcy. That is why many citizens were initially willing to overlook the government’s shortcomings, such as an intolerance of transparency, a lack of constitutionality, corruption, and nepotism. The Tempi railway accident, and even more so the government’s unacceptable handling of the catastrophe, were just one tragedy and one misdeed too many. That is the reason why so many people turned out to demonstrate.

Options for the Government and the Opposition

Faced with this situation, the government has a few different options. One would be for Prime Minister Mitsotakis, who commands a stable majority in parliament, to call a new election. However, given his party’s current approval ratings, this seems unlikely.

A second option is for the government to make a fresh start. Mitsotakis could reshuffle his government and take dramatic measures such as shutting down the railway, alongside large and swift investments in safety, or beginning investigation proceedings against Karamanlis, to demonstrate that he has learned his lesson. Yet since a fresh start would entail the opposite of the government’s approach thus far, the success of such an undertaking seems doubtful.

A third option would be to simply continue on as before until the 2027 elections. In this case, the government would have to hope that society’s outrage will die down and that the opposition will remain weak, inefficient, and fragmented. But even continuing “as usual” may not help Mitsotakis: it also carries with it the risk of right-wing extremists and “anti-system” forces gaining ground in Greece. This danger is exacerbated by the fact that the conservative New Democracy is unlikely to shy away from joining forces with such parties.

Due to SYRIZA’s fragmentation, the social-democratic PASOK, which had achieved just 11.5 percent of votes in the last election, became the strongest opposition party in the middle of the legislative term.

The poor state of parliamentary opposition, however, plays into the government’s hands. Since the pinnacle of its mobilization in 2015, the Coalition of the Radical Left (known as SYRIZA) has disintegrated into six separate parties, including former parliamentary president Zoe Konstantopoulou’s Course of Freedom party and Yanis Varoufakis’s MeRA 25. Alexis Tsipras’s resignation in 2023 and the election of the previously unknown Stafanos Kasselakis as party chairman led to a split in the New Left party, and Kasselakis, too, started his own party in 2024 along with a couple MPs. None of these factions commands a large following and, with the exception of Course of Freedom and the remnants of Syriza, they are all in danger of failing to secure enough votes to enter parliament if a new election is called.

Due to SYRIZA’s fragmentation, the social-democratic PASOK, which had achieved just 11.5 percent of votes in the last election, became the strongest opposition party in the middle of the legislative term. While PASOK dreams of returning to its old glory days, in many ways the party can hardly be distinguished from the conservative New Democracy.

The relatively powerful Communist Party (KKE), whose orthodoxy is unique within Europe, remains sidelined in any discussion of new possible structures due to its isolationism. Current polls have the KKE, like Course of Freedom, at around nine percent. The three right-wing parties combined are currently polling at around 20 percent.

Still, all the parties left of New Democracy recently came together to table a joint motion of censure. This is an important move, even though the governing party, with its parliamentary majority, will not lose the censure vote, because one thing is certain: Greece’s left-wing and centre-left parties cannot win unless they stand together and present a powerful alternative. If that does not happen, the hour of the extreme right threatens to strike Greece too.

Translated by Anna Dinwoodie and Hunter Bolin for Gegensatz Translation Collective.