Greece is erupting in anger after its train disaster

‘Message me when you get there.’ This phrase became a rallying cry when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Greece this week, in protests sparked by the country’s deadliest train disaster which killed 57 people earlier this month. Anger against the government was palpable, with protesters shouting ‘murderers’ outside the parliament building in Athens, forcing PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis to postpone his plans to announce the date of the next elections.  

To understand why this particular incident threatens to upend the ruling party’s certainties, we must unpack the phrase used by the protestors. It’s hard to understate the emotional resonance of that simple line for Greek people. My own phone is full of messages like that, sent by my mother whenever I’m travelling. They don’t even stop when you’re in your mid-thirties and live abroad. The phones of the 57 victims, most of them university students travelling from Athens to Thessaloniki in the north of the country, would have also been full of these messages.