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Laibach on stage in New York. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Laibach told BIRN on Tuesday that they were genuinely interested in playing at the annual celebration of Croatia’s 1995 victorious military operation ‘Storm’ in the Croatian village of Cavoglave – an event that has become the focus of nationalist fervour in the country.

The Cavoglave celebration is hosted by nationalist singer Marko Perkovic, alias Thompson, who each year performs his wartime hit of the same name, which starts with WWII-era Croatian fascist chant ‘Za dom spremni’ (‘Ready for the homeland’).

Laibach insisted that their offer to play at the event attended by tens of thousands of people from all over Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina was not a prank.

“We would [like to] perform in Cavoglave, why not? We have done a lot for the independent Croatian state as well, why should it just be the privilege of Marko Perkovic Thompson?” the band said in an email to BIRN.

“The audience there should hear also a different kind of music and not just his [Thompson’s]. If they [the organisers and local authorities] seriously want the best for Croatia, well, then let them call us and we will come,” they said.

Laibach became renowned in the early 1980s for their cultural resistance to censorship and totalitarian tendencies in socialist Yugoslavia, and were banned for several years by the authorities as a result.

Josip Sucic, the mayor of the Ruzic municipality, where Cavoglave is situated, told Croatian online news outlet T-portal that he was not familiar with Laibach’s work.

But when told that the band is considered controversial, he responded: “If they are provocateurs, then I think that they are not for us.”

‘Cavoglave’ played at the 20th anniversary of Operation Storm in August, when the audience chanted anti-Serb slogans.

Laibach in August became the first Western band to play live in the isolated Communist state of North Korea.

They also attracted media attention in Croatia this month by announcing they would file a lawsuit against the right-wing Croatian Democratic Assembly of Slavonia and Baranja party, which was founded by a wartime general who is currently awaiting retrial for alleged war crimes.

Laibach accused the party of unlawfully using one of their songs in a promotional video for its uniformed youth unit, the ‘Slavonic Hawk Guard’, which appears alongside the party leadership at political rallies.

The 20th anniversary of Operation Storm was not marked in Cavoglave this year because Thompson decided to move the event to the nearby town of Knin, where an official celebration took place. The concert was marred by hate speech and anti-Serb chants.