The Australian visa of tennis star, Novak Djokovic, has been cancelled.
Djokovic, who is Down Under to defend his Australian Open title, has been at the centre of some controversy in recent days. Serbian Djokovic had claimed a medical exemption so as not to have to prove he had been vaccinated against Covid-19. However, when he landed in Australia this exemption was revoked and he was detained by immigration officials. A judge subsequently ordered his release and said that the immigration officials had not followed the correct procedures. But yesterday, Alex Hawke, the Australian immigration minister, revoked his visa.
In a statement Hawke was quoted as saying: ‘Today I exercised my power… to cancel the visa held by Mr Novak Djokovic on health and good order grounds, on the basis that it was in the public interest to do so.’
Djokovic had also been accused of lying on his visa application after having said he hadn’t travelled in 14 days prior to arriving in Australia, when he had visited Spain. Djokovic claimed that it was a mistake made by his agent and had been human error and not done maliciously.
Image: Carine06 from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons