Cristian Paturca

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - A TV station is reporting that the composer of a song that inspired Romanians in their struggle against vestiges of the communist regime has died. He was 46. A friend, Teodor Maries, told private Pro-Tv he found Cristian Paturca dead in his apartment Tuesday. Paturca was suffering from tuberculosis. Paturca became one of Romania's most prominent democracy activists when he wrote "Imnul Golanilor" or "The Hooligans' Hymn" in 1990 for anti-government protesters, called "hooligans" by then-President Ion Iliescu. The communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu had collapsed in 1989. One line from the song, "better dead than a Communist," became part of Romania's post-1989 vocabulary. The word "golan" now means a pro-democracy activist as well as a hooligan. Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press