The latest demonstration is coupled with a general strike, the second to be called since the accident happened on Tuesday 28/02.

As the details of the accidents started emerging, the full extent of the total collapse of the country’s railway infrastructure became apparent: a half of the workforce gone, and a total lack of maintenance of infrastructure and technology, all the result of over a decade of harsh austerity.

The public outrage over the state of the railroads is slowly morphing into a broader anti-austerity front, the likes of which has not been seen in Greece since SYRIZA’s betrayal of the Referendum result in 2015.

People are returning to the streets who have been absent for years, citizens who are not organised in any political organisation, but whose indignation has brought them back to the marches. MeRA25 is ready to stand by the side of anyone who refused to accept the normalisation of misery as an inevitability, and welcomes this renewed, if nascent, appetite for radical change.

In the context of these rising tensions, the Secretary of our party, Yanis Varoufakis, was the victim of a fascist attack last weekend when a group of thugs, with faces covered, ambushed him while he was out dining in Athens with a group of comrades from our pan-European movement DiEM25.

Although Yanis Varoufakis attempted to speak with them and calm them down, it was clear from the start that their objective was not to start a political confrontation but to injure him, which they did by badly breaking his nose.

The government was quick to try and to explain the incident using narrative fitting their own anti-anarchist agenda, even though the attack bore no anarchist hallmarks and has not been claimed by any anarchist group.

Yanis Varoufakis and MeRA25 are determined not to allow this act of brutality to distract from the most important item on the political agenda: justice for the victims of the train crash and the overturning of the inhumane policies that led to it.

The international support we have received so far has been overwhelming. Our comrades from DiEM25 marched alongside us on Sunday and the PI has also voiced their support for our cause.

The masterminds of the austerity and dogmatic privatisation that led us to disaster were international institutions: the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission – the so-called Troika. Their reach is global, and the victims of their inane policies are spread from Argentina to Greece and beyond.

The fight against them is something that must unite all progressive forces.