Serbia demands Australia move Novak Djokovic to a nicer hotel

Serbia’s foreign secretary has hauled in Australia’s ambassador to the Balkan country to demand tennis star Novak Djokovic be moved to a nicer hotel while he is in immigration detention after his visa was cancelled.

The diplomatic intervention came as Acting Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan revealed Tennis Australia did not inform her government about Morrison government letters stating a prior COVID infection – the basis for Djokovic’s exemption – would not be accepted as a genuine exemption.

The Park Hotel in Melbourne’s Carlton neighbourhood, where Novak Djokovic is being held after having his visa cancelled. Credit: Chris Hopkins, Getty

The world no.1 tennis star is detained in the Park Hotel in Carlton, alongside a number of asylum seekers who have been detained there for years. He is awaiting a court hearing on Monday that will determine whether he will be able to stay in the country to defend his Australian Open title.

Serbian foreign secretary Nemanja Starovic on Friday revealed he called the Australian Ambassador to Serbia Daniel Emery to attend the foreign office to lodge a verbal protest due to the treatment of Djokovic in Australia.

“We expect that the ambassador personally takes action for [him] to be moved to accommodation befitting the best sportsman in the world, not a criminal or an illegal immigrant,” Mr Starovic said.

He said Serbia did not wish to influence Australian court decisions, but expected that the Australian government, in the spirit of good diplomatic relations between the two countries, to allow Djokovic to spend Orthodox Christmas in better accommodation.

Mr Starovic said there was a “strong sense in the Serbian public” that Djokovic had unwillingly become the victim of political games and that he had been baited to travel to Australia where he was later humiliated.

He said Djokovic was not a criminal, terrorist or illegal immigrant, but had been treated as such by Australian authorities, upsetting and angering his fans and the citizens of Serbia.

The Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had earlier sent a protest note to the Australian Embassy in Belgrade, while the Serbian embassy in Canberra sent a protest note to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, according to the Serbian MFA press release.

A DFAT spokesperson confirmed the Australian ambassador attended a meeting with the Serbian foreign affairs secretary on Thursday.

"No further comment will be made given these matters are currently before the court."

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews on Friday rejected allegations from Djokovic that he was being held in “captivity” in Australia.

“Well, can I say firstly that Mr Djokovic is not being held captive in Australia. He is free to leave at any time that he chooses to do so, and Border Force will actually facilitate that,” Ms Andrews told the ABC.

The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed on Thursday that federal health authorities told Tennis Australia boss Craig Tiley on two occasions in writing that people who were not vaccinated and had contracted COVID-19 in the past six months would not be granted quarantine-free travel to Australia.

Ms Allan confirmed that Mr Tiley and Tennis Australia did not pass this advice onto the Victorian government.

“I’m advised that the Victorian government, or members of the Victorian government, hadn’t seen that correspondence,” she said. “And you’d expect that we wouldn’t necessarily see that because it was correspondence between the Commonwealth government and Tennis Australia.”

The Acting Premier said the medical exemption provided to Djokovic by an independent panel, set up by the Victorian health department, gave him permission to play in the Australian Open once he was in Victoria. However, that permit would only have come into effect once Djokovic arrived in the country.

“You can only participate in the tournament if you’ve been granted the appropriate visa, and that’s very much a matter for the Commonwealth government,” she said.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said he didn’t understand why Djokovic’s visa was approved.

“I think, quite clearly, Mr Djokovic, given his statements of anti-vaxxer rhetoric, given the campaign that he ran very explicitly, for all to see, it was clear what his position was,” Mr Albanese said.

“How is it that a visa was ever granted in the first place?”

The visa that Djokovic arrived with was auto-generated online but he was required to prove he was eligible to enter the country once he landed in Australia.