Novak Djokovic has been expelled from Australia after an Australian federal court panel unanimously upheld the deportation order issued on him by the Australian immigration minister, Alexander Hawke, thus dashing his hopes of playing in the Australian Open that starts today.
I can understand his family and fans and his Serbian compatriots being upset. But the reaction has been way over the top, with the Serbian government also piling on.
[Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić] said he was sure Djokovic “would have been treated differently if he hadn’t come from Serbia … If he was from another country, the approach would be completely different. Of course people here are frustrated, 90% are on Novak’s side.”
The player’s father, Srđan, said the episode amounted to “an attempted assassination with 50 bullets to the chest”, while the sports minister, Vanja Udovičić, described it as “nonsense and shame, absurdity and hypocrisy”.
The Serbian tennis association said the “farce was over” and expressed its “huge disappointment”, describing the decision to deport Djokovic, who has won nine Australian Open titles, as political.
“Political pressure has led to the revocation of his visa to satisfy public interest,” it said. “It begs the question whether athletes will from now on be incarcerated like criminals and deported when it suits the political interests of powerful individuals.”
Boško Obradović, the leader of the far-right opposition party Dveri (the Doors), said Belgrade should introduce countermeasures and “chase the Australian ambassador” out of the country.
As I have said before, with wealthy pampered elites, even the slightest limits on their ability to do as they please is seen as a monstrous violation of their human rights. But to say that having his visa revoked is akin to “an attempted assassination with 50 bullets to the chest”? Please.
I know that for some people sports is like a religion but when the dust settles, what we really had was someone who did not get vaccinated and, amid some bureaucratic confusion that involved him making false statements on his visa application, ended up running afoul of another country’s visa requirements and not being allowed in. This happens to people all the time every day, without it being raised to the level of an international incident and being compared to an assassination attempt.
Its sad what special little flowers the antivaxxers think they are.
/shrug another jackass
What the official Serbian communications say to me is “we as a country are so weak, that we can be toppled by the loss of a single tennis player.” That’s not as good a look as they apparently think it is…
What the Serbian officials should have said: “We saved Europe from the Ottomans, and we started WWI. And this is the thanks we get?”
I would like to hear the conversations in the visa application office of the country where the next big tennis tournament takes place that Djokovic wants to play in.
If you, I, or anyone not wealthy and famous filed a false immigration declaration, we would be arrested, deported and given a ban from the country lasting years. In Australia’s case, the minimum for a visa violation is three years.
It’s laughtable that they claim a rich white athlete is being “discriminated against” while being treated with kid gloves.
Vučić is completely wrong. And it’s ironically xenophobic of him to frame the issue as one of xenophobia.
Srđan’s comment is pure hyperbole, but I think most realise that and make allowances for his extreme disappointment.
The Serbian tennis association go on about political pressure, but most of that has come from Serbia.
And every country has some tossers like Obradović. He’s making as much political capital of this as he can.
As far as the deportation goes, I did have sympathy for the first judge’s argument, who asked what else Đoković, not being a medical professional, should have done to ensure his medical exemption really was sufficient. But the Australian government always had right to revoke the visa of an anti-vaccination poster child despite that, so it all became moot in the end.
I think #1 sums it up. Special snowflake antivaxxers.
It is way over the top.
…….when all he needed was two little life-saving bullets.
He is not vaccinated, as evidenced by his need for a medical exemption -- which BTW was for playing in the tournament, NOT for entering the country.
Given the availability of vaccines for rich white sportsmen, not being vaccinated by now is admission of anti-vax sentiment -- their fucked-up ideas of personal freedom is more important than the freedom of vulnerable people not dying from a disease the spread and impact of which may be easily reduced with a simple vaccination.
He (his “agent”) made a false declaration upon arriving in the country. It also looks like his recent “positive” COVID-19 result may have been falsified. His movements while supposedly “positive” for COVID-19 belie the positive result.
@5 Intransitive
Indeed, anyone else would have been thrown out of Australia for this.
He has been caught out in an apparent lie.
I am glad he is being remove from Australia. We have been though massive lockdowns and ongoing isolation from the rest of the world -- I like many others have not seen most of my interstate family for over 2 years. Australia now has a vaccination rate over 90%. Novak can fuck off until he plays the game and gets his fucking vaccination.
Serbia has a terrible vaccination rate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/07/novak-djokovic-covid-vaccine-serbia-australia/
In his position as a national hero, Djokovic could have actually helped. He’s just another in the long list of ignorant douchebags complicit in mass murder.
an attempted assassination with 50 bullets to the chest
This is why I like the British term “jab” instead of “shots.” Texans might get all over-excited.
Rob Grigjanis@#3:
What the Serbian officials should have said: “We saved Europe from the Ottomans, and we started WWI. And this is the thanks we get?”
Now I have tea on my keyboard!! Curse you, Serbians!
Tell that to Renata Voráčová, Czech Australian Open player who also had her visa cancelled on similar grounds to Djokovic.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-08/czech-tennis-player-renata-vor%C3%A1%C4%8Dov%C3%A1-deported-from-australia/100746080
A third unvaccinated person travelling to Australia for the AO, named only in that article as “European tennis official” apparently also had their visa cancelled, though I don’t recall any specific information about them being in the Australian press.
Djokovic’s visa cancellation comes with an automatic 3-year bar on him being granted entry to Australia, though it is possible to apply for a waiver of that. I can’t see that happening as long as Australia has the vaccination requirement for entry and Djokovic remains unvaccinated.
Personally, though I agree that Djokivic should have been denied entry, I think that the whole thing has been a complete mess and I don’t think anyone comes out of it looking good.
Really? How then does he account for the fact that Novak has been attending the Australian Open regularly since 2004 as a junior? It seems more likely that he’d have been treated differently if he hadn’t lied on his application to attend.
Marcus @10:
Here in New Zealand the mobile vaccination buses are called “Shot bro” (NZ slang for “Thanks brother”, like “Cheers mate”). They’ve been popular.
I blame Đoković‘s parents. With a name like no-vacc…
Sounds like things that might have been said by my own congresscritters. (I’m thinking of my representative, Ann Wagner, and junior senator, Josh Hawley. My senior senator, Roy Blunt, is also a far right wackaloon, but hasn’t yet gone completely over to the dark side.)
file thirteen @ 14
Tu meke bro!
All he had to do was get the jab, but he decided he was above the law. Screw him.
A few years ago a famous husband and wife set of actors flew into Australia in a private plane with two dogs.
As soon as they, the dogs, were discovered the couple were booted out but the Aussies did not shoot the dogs or criminally charge the couple.
Djokovic was stupid but not as stupid as this couple.
The handling of Boo & Pistol was one of the very few times I found myself agreeing with Barnaby Joyce, the then Australian Minister for Agriculture.
Australia is free of a number of plant and animal pests and diseases, including, and especially in that case, rabies.
Heard was in fact charged with, and found guilty of, producing a false document, but no conviction was recorded . Heard was also charged with two counts of illegally importing an animal, but those charges were dropped.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-18/johnny-depp-and-amber-heard-gold-coast-court-dogs/7333662
“As I have said before, with wealthy pampered elites”
It’s more than that; it’s an appeal to rabid nationalism, which has been on the rise in Europe since several years.
@3 RobG: “What the Serbian officials should have said: “We saved Europe from the Ottomans …..”
Those officials would be lynched. Their heroic nationalistic moment was a devastating defeat. Look up Battle of Kosovo Polje. Within a few years the Ottomans controlled the entire Balkan.
At the other hand the Serbians did not start WW-1. The Austrians were the first to declare war -- on Serbia, after that country accepted all Austrian demands but one.
Yeah yeah, you are going to mention Archduke Franz Ferdinand being killed. That was more than a month before; the powers that were did not expect an escalation at all and went on summer leave. What you’re not going to mention is Austria intentionally making the ultimating unacceptable.
@11 MarcusR: good to read that your combination of ignorance and disdain for the millions of victims that followed (including the Serbian population being terrorized by Austrian occupation) made you laugh. Seeing 25% of a population dying is extremely funny indeed.
(/sarcasm)
@ 19 prl
I had not read about the charge. And I had forgotten it was Barnaby Joyce but I do remember sending him a congratulatory email.
I probably should have suggested to Barnaby Joyce that he have the dogs quarantined and the humans put down.
I come from Eastern Ontario which once styled itself the Rabies Capitol of the world. Whet I was younger it was a constant background danger. We could say it was endemic. Anytime you saw an animal behaving slightly erratically you reported it to the authorities at once or when in the country shot it and then reported it.
Massive efforts by the Gov’ts of Ontario and Québec in Canada and New York State in the USA has pretty well eradicated around here but it could return.
Rabies in humans is 100% fatal. Well I believe there has been one person somewhere in the wilds of Wisconsin or Minnesota who has survived with months of madly heroic, experimental, space-age medical treatment.
mnb0
Are you acting the fool, or are you genuinely this silly?
@11 MarcusR: good to read that your combination of ignorance and disdain for the millions of victims that followed (including the Serbian population being terrorized by Austrian occupation) made you laugh. Seeing 25% of a population dying is extremely funny indeed.
I was not laughing at or about the victims. I was laughing at the clever way Rob Grigjanis structured his irony.
The reaction from certain demographics of people not being handed the world on a platter is akin to the line attributed Mel Brooks explaining the difference between comedy and tragedy: Tragedy is when I stub my toe, comedy is when someone else false into an open manhole and dies.