Tennis superstar Novak Djokovic is being held in an Australian immigration detention facility after his entry visa was revoked at the border. Canberra vowed Thursday to deport him if a late legal appeal fails.
The Serbian tennis player, currently ranked number one in the world, produced a vaccine medical exemption to enter Australia upon landing. This was denied by border officials, as Breitbart News reported.
It is currently unclear why Djokovic was rejected by the Australian Border Force (ABF) after initially being granted the exemption by Tennis Australia and the Victoria state government.
The clearance was needed so he could play at the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the season at the Australian Open on the 17th of January 2022.
Djokovic will now be held in Melbourne until Monday after launching a last-minute bid in the Federal Circuit Court to stop the federal government from deporting him before the tournament begins, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Lawyers for the Serbian star appeared in an online hearing after he had his visa cancelled and was sent to an immigration detention center.
Members of the local Serbian community gather for a vigil outside a hotel where Serbia’s tennis champion Novak Djokovic is reported to be staying in Melbourne on January 6, 2022, after Australia said it had cancelled Djokovic’s entry visa after having failed to “provide appropriate evidence” of double vaccination or a medical exemption. (WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images)
Nine-time winner and the defending champion Djokovic, 34, was initially detained at Melbourne airport for several hours on landing on the 5th of January. He was then moved to a hotel controlled by the ABF.
In a statement on Djokovic, the ABF said the player “failed to provide appropriate evidence to meet the entry requirements to Australia, and his visa has been subsequently cancelled”.
“Non-citizens who do not hold a valid visa on entry or who have had their visa cancelled will be detained and removed from Australia”, they continued.
Currently you can only enter Australian if you are fully vaccinated or have a medical exemption for not being vaccinated, as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed:
Djokovic has been a long term critic of the coronavirus vaccine, saying in 2020 he was “opposed to vaccination” and wouldn’t “want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel”.
The President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić in a post on Instagram has said that he has spoken to Djokovik over the phone and told him, “the whole of Serbia is with him”, and that the Serbian authorities will be using “international public law” to “fight” for “justice and truth.”
Fellow player Rafael Nadal expressed little sympathy for long-time rival Djokovic, saying on Thursday he must face the consequences for not being vaccinated against coronavirus.
Pro-refugee activists sit on an awning over the hotel entrance where Serbia’s tennis player Novak Djokovic is reported to be staying along with detained refugees in Melbourne on January 6, 2022. (WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images)
Nadal contracted Covid last month and said he was a big believer in getting vaccinated to stem a pandemic in which “a lot of people had been dying”.
“I went through the Covid, I have been vaccinated twice. If you do this, you don’t have any problem to play here. That’s the only clear thing,” he said in Melbourne after winning his first singles match on the ATP Tour since August.
Australia has had some of the toughest coronavirus restrictions in the world throughout the pandemic with reports of individuals being forcibly detained despite having negative tests, police firing rubber bullets to disperse protests deemed illegal, and violently arresting people for not wearing face masks.
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