Slovenian Rockers Laibach to Sue Croatian Right-Wingers

Slovenian avant-garde rockers Laibach have threatened to sue a Croatian right-wing political party for using one of the band’s best-known songs in a promotional video.

Laibach said on Thursday that they will file a lawsuit for copyright infringement against the right-wing Croatian Democratic Assembly of Slavonia and Baranja, HDSSB party after it used their song ‘Geburt einer Nation’ in a promotional video without permission.

The HDSSB, whose honorary president is Croatian war crimes suspect Branimir Glavas, used the song from Laibach’s 1987 album ‘Opus Dei’ album in a video to promote a uniformed party youth unit called the Slavonian Hawk Guard.

The Slavonian Hawk Guard video with the song in the background was shown at a party rally, but it was also broadcast by local television and therefore made public and subject to the copyright infringement allegation.

The guard was first shown in a video made by Croatian newspaper 24 Sata, which showed a group of young men dressed in black uniforms carrying party, Croatian and regional flags.

Their training was supervised by Glavas, who was released from prison in January due to procedural issues in his trial for war crimes against Serb civilians in Osijek in eastern Croatia in 1991. He is currently awaiting retrial.

Glavas has insisted that the Slavonian Hawk Guard is not “a party army” but a “sports and recreation section, which will also take care of security [at party events and rallies]”.

The wartime commander also made headlines recently when pictures of him posing with a bottle of wine with Adolf Hitler’s face on the label were posted on Facebook.