BELGRADE, Serbia — President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia blasted the Australian government on Sunday for what he called the “harassment” of Novak Djokovic, deriding the legal process that led to the tennis star’s deportation one day before the start of the Australian Open as “Orwellian” and saying that the player would be welcomed home.
“I talked to Novak a while ago, and I encouraged him, and I told him that I can’t wait for him to come to Serbia and return to his country, and to be where he is always welcome,” Mr. Vucic said in a statement on the day that Mr. Djokovic left Australia after a legal dispute surrounding his coronavirus vaccination status.
“They think that they humiliated Djokovic with this 10-day harassment, and they actually humiliated themselves,” Mr. Vucic said.
In Serbia, where Mr. Djokovic is deeply revered and widely respected as one of his country’s greatest sports stars, even those who did not support his decision to remain unvaccinated said that he had been maligned and mistreated.
Dr. Predrag Kon, a member of Serbia’s pandemic response team who has been a lead voice in calling for people to get vaccinated as the rapidly spreading Omicron variant brings a new wave of infection, joined those expressing outrage.
“I am shocked by the decision,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is by no means in the spirit of the International Health Regulations, which speak of the free movement of passengers, goods and services. I wish he never got into this situation.”
Vuk Jeremic, who was Serbia’s foreign minister from 2007 to 2012 before serving as president of the United Nations General Assembly, said that Mr. Djokovic’s refusal to be vaccinated should be seen in the context of the region.
“Unfortunately, such is the widespread opinion in most of southeast Europe, the underlying reasons being deep and to do with general distrust toward governments and institutions, after decades of terrible corruption and growing inequality,” Mr. Jeremic said.
But he stated that this did not justify the events as they unfolded.
“The Australian government’s conduct toward him has been utterly disgraceful,” Mr. Jeremic said in an email sent as Mr. Djokovic’s legal team was making its arguments in court.
A panel of three federal judges went on to rule that Australia’s immigration minister was within his rights to cancel the unvaccinated tennis star’s visa on the basis that the player could pose a risk to public health and order.
Mr. Jeremic called the Australian government’s mantra in the case — “rules are rules” — hypocrisy.
“All the other tournament participants who got the medical exemption from the same medical panel got the same visa and entered Australia without hindrance,” Mr. Jeremic said. “Novak is a victim of brinkmanship by shameless populists, exclusively driven by snap opinion polls.”
After revoking Mr. Djokovic’s visa a second time, all the Australian government had to do to win its legal case this weekend was show that the tennis star “may” cause harm if allowed to stay in the country despite being unvaccinated against the coronavirus.
In Serbia, however, the decision to kick Djokovic out Australia was met with outrage. On Sunday, the headline of a leading tabloid, Kurir, captured the mood: “Shame on Australia! The biggest shame in the history of sports happened in Melbourne.”
The Serbian Tennis Federation claimed it was a victory over politics.
Mr. Djokovic, in an emailed statement, said that he was “extremely disappointed” but that he respected the ruling. A few hours after publishing the statement, Djokovic flew to Dubai from Australia. His team stated that this would be his last comment on the matter until the Australian Open.
Although Mr. Djokovic stated that he was not happy with all the attention and hoped that the focus could be returned to tennis, there was consensus in Serbia that the matter was poorly handled. Many believe that Mr. Djokovic would have been treated differently if he was from a more wealthy country.
The tennis player’s father, Srdjan Djokovic — who is not known for understatement and who compared his son to Jesus Christ during the ordeal — broke several days of silence to repost an image on Instagram on Sunday morning.
Written over pictures of his son winning trophies were the words: “The attempt to assassinate the best athlete in the world has ended, 50 bullets in Novak’s chest.”
Mr. Vucic stated that the imbroglio could be avoided if Australia had made clear that players would need to be vaccinated before they could enter the country to play.
The Serbian leader accused the lawyers representing Australia’s government of not telling the truth. In particular, he took issue with the way Serbia’s coronavirus vaccination rates were presented in court.
“They say that less than 50 percent of vaccinated citizens are in Serbia, and officially 58 percent,” he said.
Mr. Vucic was citing figures for adults, but the vaccination rate for the country’s total population is about 50 percent, according to Our World in Data. This rate is much lower than in many of the Western European countries.
It is also well below the 91.6 percent of the population over age 16 in Australia who are fully vaccinated, a figure cited by Immigration Minister Alex Hawke — and one that the government said Mr. Djokovic’s presence in the country could undermine.
While Mr. Djokovic is silent on the subject, he did say in April 2020 that he was against the idea of making vaccination compulsory for travel.
“I am no expert, but I do want to have an option to choose what’s best for my body,” he said. “I am keeping an open mind, and I’ll continue to research on this topic, because it is important and it will affect all of us.”
He arrived in Australia this month and admitted that he hadn’t been vaccinated. However, he presented evidence of coronavirus infection to be granted an exemption to travel.
However, in the end, the case revolved less around the technical aspects of the case and more around the symbolism of the moment — both in Australia and Serbia.
For Australians, who have endured some of the world’s longest pandemic lockdowns, Mr. Djokovic’s decision not to be vaccinated flew in the face of collective efforts to stop the virus.
In Serbia, Mr. Vucic and others often tied the treatment of the nation’s star tennis player to the nation itself. Sunday’s statement by the president was that Serbia would not tolerate such treatment of athletes.
“We will show that we are better than the Australian government,” he said.
Vucic stated that, even though Djokovic lost his fight in Australia, he was still a hero in Serbia.
“He can return to his country and look everyone in the eye with his head held high,” he said.
Source: NY Times
