LINTA: THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR GLORIFYING USTASHA IDEOLOGY IN STUTTGART MUST FACE SANCTIONS

BELGRADE, NOVEMBER 11 /SRNA/ - Miodrag Linta, president of the Union of Serbs from the Region, said Croatian Nazism had been promoted in front of thousands of people at a concert by Marko Perković Thompson in Stuttgart, and that those responsible must be punished. Its Ustasha movement was responsible for genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma, he said.

"The competent German authorities are obliged to launch an investigation, establish the responsibility of those who displayed Ustasha insignia and chanted the `Za dom spremni` /For Homeland - ready/ salute, and punish those responsible in accordance with the law," Linta said.

He stressed that the German authorities should ban concerts at which Ustasha ideology and its symbols were publicly promoted, the Union of Serbs from the Region said in a statement.

"That would send a clear message that the Ustasha ideology, the Croatian version of Nazism, must not be promoted publicly in Germany under the guise of music and entertainment," Linta said.

At Thompson's concert in Stuttgart on Saturday, November 7, for which 6,500 tickets were sold, Ustasha symbols were openly displayed and the crowd chanted "Za dom spremni", the official salute of the Ustasha movement during World War II.

Thompson's management has applied for permission to hold another concert in Stuttgart, in a much larger hall that holds up to 15,000 people.

The singer will also perform in Frankfurt on November 13. The ruling Christian Democratic Union dropped its initial reservations about the concert after the organizers promised that no "songs with controversial content" would be performed.