A Pride march in Serbia on Saturday condemned police violence against anti-government protesters and offered support to university students behind the months-long demonstrations against populist President Aleksandar Vucic. 

Participants instead held a commemorative silence that has marked the past 10 months of persistent student-led demonstrations challenging Vucic.

Organizers said the event was envisaged as a protest, without festival-style features as police secured the Belgrade pride march that has been a high-risk event for years, sometimes marred with violent attacks from right-wing extremists. 

Members of Serbia's embattled LGBTQ+ community routinely face harassment in the highly conservative country.

Serbia is formally seeking European Union membership but has done little to boost LGBTQ+ rights, including legalizing same-sex partnerships.

The protests started in November when a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station in Serbia’s north, killing 16 people.

The disaster ignited a wave of anti-corruption demonstrations alleging graft-fuelled negligence as its cause. 

Increasingly, authoritarian Vucic has rejected a student demand for a snap parliamentary election.

He has stepped up a crackdown against the protesters, sacking scores of professors and teachers and deploying police inside some faculty buildings.

AP Video shot by Ivana Bzganovic