Greek students at Forum protest their government: ‘We want justice and the truth, finally, two years after the train accident.’ Two years ago, a fatal train accident occurred in Greece. Among the 57 people who died, there were many students. Today Greece is put on hold due to protests and strikes against the government. On campus, some 150 – primarily Greek – students showed their solidarity with the protesters in their homeland.
Food safety student Paraskevi Kouroglou explains that today’s protest on campus is mainly to show solidarity with the protesters in Greece, but also with the relatives of those killed in the train accident. The student says the protesters want the truth because it is still being hushed up. ‘There is so much evidence that many more deaths than the official number were caused by flammable illegal substances. There are even recordings made on iPhones of people after the accident – who were alive at the time – who subsequently died because of those chemicals.’ Wageningen students are extra involved in the Greek protest because the passengers who died included many students, on their way back home from carnival. A student next to Kouroglou shows videos of Athens that he has just received; the streets in the capital are brimming with people participating in the protest.
Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis spoke earlier of a ‘tragic human error’. That statement is bizarre and a lie, says Kouroglou: ‘A new independent and damning report shows that the track was also badly outdated. The fault lies very clearly with the government and with the railroad company. And so, the government is withholding evidence. The huge explosion that occurred after the accident could never have been caused by oil or fuel. The government must stop dismissing all the evidence as conspiracies and admit that the accident was human error. We finally want justice after two years, we want openness, we want the truth.’
