29/01/2025
Mass rallies across the country against the policies that do not let us breathe
Statements
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 “It's either 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.
Streams of anger, hope and oxygen, the right will be judged with the people in the street!
"Rivers of rage, hope and oxygen, the right will be judged with the people in the street!", states the Press Office of the CC of KNE on the occasion of last saturday's shocking rallies for the crime in Tempe.
In particular, it notes:
"The streets have spoken! The 'oxygen' came out of the hope of demand and the flooded squares. The crime in Tempe will not be forgotten, will not be covered up!
The staggering rallies across the country, the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators prove that the people and the youth do not forget, do not forgive the culprits of the crime in Tempe, the state, the governments that serve the profits of the few. They prove that there will be no tolerance for the attempt to cover up the crime and their responsibilities. The attempted state repression and authoritarianism, with riot police attacking demonstrators at the end of the grand rally, also fell on deaf ears.
Their crime filled us with anger. It's either their profits or our lives!
Now we are strengthening the struggle to make the real culprits pay for the crime in Tempe:
- The state and its institutions, the policy of the governments, which sacrifices human lives on the altar of profit, which creates and covers up the crimes.
- The policy that has filled our lives with crimes like 'Tempe': In schools and universities with crumbling ceilings, inadequate and unmaintained infrastructure. In hospitals with shortages of doctors and infrastructure. In workplaces with non-existent protection measures. In every flood or fire where the people are left unprotected.
- The European Union is also complicit in this crime, with its policy of liberalisation and privatisation of transport. By selecting a government official from the New Democracy party, which has particular responsibility for this tragedy, to the post of Transport Commissioner, it is also essentially helping to cover up the crime.
Only mass and organised struggle can make us 'breathe'!
With the momentum of our rightful struggle, with the hope of the flooded streets, with the 'breath' of the staggering participation of the people and the youth, we will continue to fight for justice for the 57 dead of Tempe. We are escalating the struggle, ahead of the two-year anniversary of the crime on 28 February.
We call on the youth in all workplaces, universities and schools now to intensify the struggle for the crime not to be covered up, for all criminal and political responsibilities to be attributed. To take the struggle to the end, until all the causes that have given birth and are giving birth to crimes like in "Tempe" are finally eliminated, in a new society, a socialist society, centred on man and his needs.
Such a policy closes no wound, profits in the dock will mean justice!"
