02/03/2026
Mass rallies mark three years since the Tempe train crash
Statement of the Executive Secretariat of the Students' Struggle Front (MAS)
Statements
On 28 February, mass strike rallies organized by trade unions were held in Athens and dozens of other cities across Greece to mark the third anniversary of the railway crime in Tempe. Hundreds of thousands flooded the streets across the country, proving that the slogan “Either their profits or our lives” is mobilizing broad masses of working people and popular strata, sending the message that this crime will not be forgotten.
The Executive Secretariat of the Students' Struggle Front (MAS) salutes the massive participation of Student Associations in the huge rallies and at the same time calls for next day's rally organized by the trade unions to condemn the US–Israeli attack on Iran.
More specifically, the ES of MAS notes:
“Shattering moments today in Syntagma Square and across the country! Hundreds of thousands of people — youth, university students and school students — once again flooded the streets in the strike rallies! The slogan ‘Their profits or our lives’ rang out loudly, and the message was clear and loud: We do not forget and we do not forgive. We will not get used to pain and death, to the sacrifices demanded by a rotten system that has profit as its law and its ‘god’!
The government’s and the mass media’s attempt to bury the rallies, to impose silence, to cultivate a climate of fear through the police clampdown, the checks and the mass detentions and police round-ups in the centre of Athens, fell flat.
Today proved once again that the people have power. Their power lies in organization and struggle, in decisive confrontation with the ‘rails of profit’ that run through every aspect of our lives, in an unjust society that treats transport, education and health as commodities.
Tens of thousands of male and female students took to the streets today behind the banners of our Student Associations, together with workers and their trade unions. We have a common enemy: the business groups; their rotten state that shields profits; the European Union; and all those who governed and govern, implementing its directions. It is the policy of profit that today tramples on our right to modern, upgraded and truly free studies.
Just as we massively condemned the policy that led to the crime in Tempe, so too we must condemn the new crime of the USA and Israel, who attacked Iran, already leading to the deaths of more than 60 primary schoolgirls after the bombing of a school!
The New Democracy government bears enormous responsibility and has hands stained with blood! The same goes for the systemic opposition. They dress up and justify the imperialists’ pretexts, which serve to cover up their real aims — namely, control of oil, the routes for transporting energy and goods, and strikes against their rivals. The government has sent a Patriot missile battery to Saudi Arabia, into the eye of the storm, while preparing to send occupation troops to martyred Gaza. At the Souda base, the Americans are gathering forces to fuel the major conflict that is spreading across the Middle East.
We call on every Student Association to take initiatives to oppose the country’s involvement in the war and to condemn the new imperialist intervention.
We call on every student to take part in the new rally called by the workers’ trade unions of Attica, tomorrow, Sunday 1 March, at 11 a.m., at Freedom Park, and in the march to the US Embassy.”