Australia: Guilty of foul play in Djokovic detention?
Australia has humiliated itself with its treatment of Novak Djokovic, said The Age in an editorial. The Serbian tennis superstar, an avowed vaccine skeptic, was scheduled to play in this month’s Australian Open, where he is a nine-time champ and hopes to win a record-breaking 21st Grand Slam title. Originally granted a medical exemption to Australia’s vaccination requirement because he’d recently recovered from Covid, the men’s tennis No. 1 was shocked to find on arrival in Melbourne last week that his visa had been revoked, thanks to miscommunication between Tennis Australia, Victoria state authorities, and the federal government. Djokovic was “mistreated and lied to at the airport,” then hurled into a squalid detention hotel for several days, until a judge ruled he could enter the country. The tennis star is no angel. Djokovic showed “extreme recklessness” in going around maskless after his positive test last month. And he wrote on a border entry form that he hadn’t traveled in the two weeks before he flew to Australia, even though social media posts show him in Serbia and Spain over the holidays. Still, Australia’s bait and switch was inexcusable. A recent Covid infection does not exempt international visitors from vaccination requirements, so no visa should have been granted. But that’s not Djokovic’s fault, and now that he’s here, he should play.
Many Aussies are miffed at that outcome, said The West Australian in an editorial. We have endured some of the world’s longest and strictest Covid lockdowns: Melbourne residents spent nearly nine months trapped at home. We’ve missed weddings and funerals and the births of grandkids, while our businesses suffered “massive losses.” It is intolerable to watch a “petulant sports star” flout our Covid rules when he could have just gotten shots like the rest of us. He’s not the only star to get special treatment, said Stan Grant in ABC.net.au. “With a federal election looming,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison was happy to act tough with Djokovic and declare that “rules are rules.” Yet rules are never simply rules. During lockdown, while thousands of Australians were stranded overseas, barred from coming home, the rich and famous were allowed to jet in and out. Hollywood stars Julia Roberts and Matt Damon even “set up temporary home in Australia.”
The Djokovic mess has thrown a much-needed spotlight on Australia’s atrocious immigration system, said Alistair Walsh in DeutscheWelle.de (Germany). Djokovic’s mother complained of “fleas and horrid food” in the migrant hotel where he was detained—the same hotel where dozens of refugees with validated asylum claims have been languishing for years. One Iranian man approved for resettlement in the U.S. has spent his whole youth, age 15 to 24, in a room there. And such incarceration “is a relative luxury compared with the misfortune of others seeking asylum in Australia”; thousands of migrants are warehoused in prison-like offshore detention camps where abuse is rife, conditions are filthy, and medical care is minimal. These “Kafkaesque border policies” are pointlessly cruel. Now that the world is watching, will they finally end?