A tough-on-borders stance became the cornerstone of his successful reelection campaign in November 2001. (Many families who had been aboard the ship were not reunited until 2004.) For Howard, the immediate outcome was happier. Most of the men were sent to Nauru, the world’s smallest island nation, where some spent years awaiting processing by the Australian government. The women and children on board were settled in New Zealand. This applied retroactively in forbidding “unauthorized individuals” from landing on Australian territory, even for the purposes of claiming refugee status. The same day in August 2001 that Prime Minister John Howard sent the military to intercept the MV Tampa and prevent the asylum-seekers from landing in Australia, he introduced the Border Protection Bill into Parliament. But as with Djokovic, the rules at the point of entry turned out to be different. In the Tampa affair, various international treaties Australia is bound to, including the 1951 Refugee Convention, led Afghans fleeing war to travel to Australia, believing they could apply for and likely receive asylum there. After arriving, Australian border officials took his passport and interviewed him the following day, his visa was canceled because, according to the Australian government, prior infection is not sufficient reason for exemption from a vaccination requirement for inbound travelers. 5, Djokovic, unvaccinated but believing he had been granted an exemption due to his prior infection, landed in Australia. In December 2021, Djokovic himself contracted the virus. Shortly after, Tennis Australia decided a prior COVID-19 infection or a doctor’s note would be sufficient to receive an exemption from the rule that all players be vaccinated. 18, 2021, the Australian government granted Djokovic a temporary visa to compete in the Australian Open. But here is what we know of Djokovic’s: On Nov. Immigration systems are usually byzantine by design, so the details of both stories are hard to parse. On the face of it, Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic-the first in his profession to win $100 million in prize money, considered by many the greatest tennis player of all time, and a brand ambassador for, among other entities, an Austrian banking cooperative-has little in common with an Afghan refugee.īut this past week, when he entered Australia to play in its Grand Slam tournament only to be detained by immigration officials, Djokovic exposed the punitive and arbitrary nature of the country’s immigration system-just as a group of Hazara asylum-seekers did 20 years ago when the Royal Australian Navy intercepted them on the high seas in what came to be known as the “ Tampa affair,” for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa that picked up the migrants at sea when their own boat sank and tried to bring them to Australia.
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