Eventually Novak Djokovic returns home. To draw it as a defeat of the Serbian tennis player, however, is misleading and perhaps even a bit partisan. Because, let’s say it before continuing, suddenly the world seems to be divided between vax and no-vax: before any other consideration, even before giving the cards, first of all. The label has become a must, as if to clarify and justify everything that comes after. This is how the Australian government seems to have reasoned.
Not in denying Novak the opportunity to play the Open, but in imposing the rest of the world to enter its borders only for those who have been vaccinated (we do not know if you have to have done the two doses or you also need the booster ).
We believe that in the end, as mentioned in the first article of the three dedicated to the Djokovic-Australian Open-Vaccine theme, whoever really comes out with broken bones is the Tournament. In fact, when the Serbian champion is now in Dubai, the bitter question arises on all the world’s media: do the AOs without Nole, and with the fished out Caruso, have the same value as the others?
We ask you: the risk that Novak will not be able to set foot in Australia for the next three years to those who fear most: to the Serbian, who will still have the opportunity to increase his successes (and earnings) with Paris, Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows or to the Australian Federation, which risks having editions tainted by retrothinking “… but Nole was missing!”?
We are still convinced that it would have been better for everyone if the organizers of the Open had banned the Serbian from going to Australia right from the start: Australian laws are clear and therefore there were no exemptions to justify his entry. After all, Migration Minister Hawke and the federal court today openly stigmatized the decision of the Australian Federation. If this had immediately prevented Djokovic from “trying”, everyone could have hoped for something different next year: end of the pandemic, change of rules, Nole vaccinated. Now the omelette is done.
A consideration, however, deserves the firm decision not to allow entry to those who are not vaccinated. It is clear that it is difficult to go to Australia, a territory the size of Europe and with a population of 20 million inhabitants. That the will to preserve one’s splendid (?) Isolation passes through the caudine forks of visas granted with a dropper is its own right.
However, preventing entry into the country to those who are not vaccinated seems to have little to do with public health and much to do with the logic of limiting immigration to a well-defined part of the world population. Because it is well known that in the world only 50% of the population is vaccinated against covid and those who are not come mainly from poor countries. It seemed to us that these days the Aussie government and federation were wrapping up in their own rigor. To stop the many poor who, unbeknownst to and ignorant of all, end up in the collection centers and then rejected – read the beautiful article by Riccardo Noury in Il Manifesto The half-star refugee hotel, a symbol of cruel Australia – the Australian institutions have found themselves forced to have to stop even a character that they would have quietly and contentedly (neologism of Cetto La Qualunque) let in and play.
If it weren’t for the consistency that is sometimes required of the institutions too …
