Thousands of people demonstrated across the country on Sunday 26 January 2025 to stop the cover-up of the crime in Tempe, where a passenger train collided with a commercial train two years ago, killing 57 people. An expert report has recently come to light showing that the commercial train was probably carrying illegal, flammable cargo, which caused the huge explosion and fire that killed most of the people who were trapped in the wreckage and burned alive.

The collision of the two trains, unfortunately, confirmed the complaints of the railway trade unionists, as well as those of the KKE, which, a few days earlier, had denounced from the floor of the Greek parliament the lack of necessary safety systems sacrificed by the bourgeois state on the altar of the profitability of big capital.

The slogan “Their profits or our lives”, which has been used for two years in the mass popular demonstrations after the crime in Tempe, was written on the banners of the trade unions and student associations and was chanted by thousands of workers and youth.

Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of the CC of the KKE, took part in the mass rally of the people and youth in the city of Serres to ensure that the crime in Tempe is not covered up. His presence was symbolic, as Kostas Karamanlis, Minister of Transport in the New Democracy government at the time of the crime in Tempe, is from Serres.

“At this time, here in Serres and throughout the country, the people and the youth are mobilizing and demanding that all the causes that led first to the collision of the two trains in Tempe, which cost the lives of our fellow human beings, most of them young people, and then to the huge explosion and fire, be uncovered, because if this had not happened, they could have been saved.

All those responsible and those who interfered at the scene and tried to cover up this crime must be held accountable. They must tell us why evidence such as video footage, which is crucial to this tragedy, to this huge crime, was found late or disappeared. Those responsible must be prosecuted for this great crime that they have committed against the Greek people, against the Greek youth, so that such tragedies, such crimes, do not happen again.

To this end, all the people and the youth will be united at the forefront of the struggle, until the real culprits, whoever is responsible for this tragedy, whether they are in the government or in the state apparatus, are punished,” said D. Koutsoumbas.

27.01.2024