Buenos Aires pride organisers have criticised the city government for not providing police security during the march planned for Saturday.

According to teleSUR, a committee of 30 LGBT groups have signed the joint statement calling the government’s actions an attaack on freedom of speech.

Homosexual Argentinian Community member Marcelo Suntheim said: “[Mayor] Macri’s government told us that the organizing committee must take care of the security, preventing crime, as if we were the police.

“By making us responsible for security, we have to act as if we were police. This is something we don’t want, and actually it is illegal.”

The statement called the move an effort to “bankrupt non-profit organizations and weaken freedom of speech in public.”

More than 150,000 people attended the 22nd annual gay pride event in Buenos Aires last year, which featured many signs and speeches including some criticisms of the former bishop, Pope Francis I, who once vowed to oppose the city’s same-sex marriage laws.