Thousands of high-school students marched through Serbia鈥檚 capital on Monday, the latest in months of demonstrations denouncing graft that have piled pressure on president Aleksandar Vucic.
The rally 鈥� conducted in silence 鈥� passed off peacefully, unlike ones in mid-August that degenerated into violence from what protesters said was heavy-handed tactics by government loyalists and police.
The regular demonstrations started over a fatal train-station roof collapse 10 months ago.
The November 2024 tragedy, which killed 16 people in the northern city of Novi Sad, quickly became a symbol of entrenched corruption in the Balkan nation.
While they have led to the resignation of the prime minister and the collapse of his government, Vucic has remained defiantly in office, at the helm of a reshuffled administration.
He has so far brushed off demands for early elections, and alleges the demonstrations are part of a foreign plot.
鈥楾en months is an enormous period of time, and nothing has changed. Not a single thing. Not one person has been held accountable鈥� for the rail-station collapse, 18-year-old Lazar, a final-year high school student from Belgrade, said.
The protest he marched in featured no slogans but was marked by the symbolic silence in memory of the victims.
鈥榃e remember the tragedy, we demand accountability, we fight for a better country. We do not look away. Together until the end,鈥� students wrote on Instagram.
Protesters also held commemorative marches in the cities of Kragujevac and Novi Sad.
Earlier, dozens of students had assembled outside Novi Sad train station, the site of the tragedy.
Police estimate that there have been approximately 23,000 gatherings of varying sizes nationwide since the protest movement began.
The largest of the demonstrations have drawn hundreds of thousands of people.
Authorities have rejected allegations of brutality, despite videos in mid-August showing officers beating unarmed protesters and accusations that activists were assaulted while in custody.
Since then, the gatherings in recent weeks have been largely calm.
Vucic鈥檚 ruling party, in power since 2012, has responded by starting to stage its own rallies around the country.
Police said more than 1,00,000 people attended the rallies on Sunday. AFP could not verify the figure.
