After 10 hours of being held at the Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne, World No. 1 Novak Djokovic was relocated to a detention centre at the Park Hotel in Carlton. The hotel has been criticised in the past for being a below-average option to detain refugees entering Australia. The hotel was especially under the media spotlight during the ongoing pandemic when asylum-seekers complained of being put in danger due to the conditions they were kept in.
Attempt to leave squashed
What started with an Instagram post informing about Djokovic’s upcoming return down under with a medical exemption in his pocket, has turned into a legal battle set to have its moment on Monday. Djokovic gets to plead his case under Australian jurisdiction to plead why he should be allowed into the country. Until then, he has to stay put at the Park Hotel. According to reports in Serbia, his attempts to leave the hotel and be with his team were quashed.
‘Animal cannot eat this food’
Currently, there are 36 detainees at the Park Hotel and according to The Guardian, some have been there for as long as eight years. While Djokovic’s views on the Covid-19 vaccine have frustrated many, his stay at the hotel has once again brought focus on Australia’s poor treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers.
Asylum-seekers have said that there have been instances of maggots and mould in the food provided by the hotel. These reports came out two days prior to the New Year. “I was just shocked. The food they’ve been delivering is putting people in danger,” Mustafa Salah, an Iraqi asylum- seeker being held at the facility, told SBS News on Wednesday. “Even an animal cannot eat this type of food.”
Salah was 14 when he was brought to Australia when he, along with his father, sought asylum in Australia. The pair were detained in Nauru for a few years before being transported to Melbourne in 2019.
The week previous to this report, a fire had broken out at the hotel. The men complained that they weren’t evacuated from the building and footage from Australian news channels showed that the men were being held on level one with police guarding the entrance to the hotel. The fire meant that the detainees have not had access to the laundry room or the gym.
Thirty-six detainees
The Park Hotel isn’t the only detention centre that has faced complaints from asylum-seekers. In 2015, a report stated that human teeth were found in the meal served to an asylum-seeker at a detention centre on Manus Island. In September 2020, a news report from SBS stated that there were as many as 100 detainees at the Kangaroo Point Hotel in Brisbane, some of whom were Muslim and were not provided halal food for more than a year. The detainees filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission.
“After research and investigation, we find out the food provided by Serco is not halal food and this is from the beginning when we arrive in Brisbane,” Iranian detainee Amin Afravi told SBS. The 36 detainees at the Park Hotel are joined by 124 asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea and 100 in Nauru.
Boon for long-time residents?
While for the outside world, especially Melbourne, Djokovic and his anti-vaccination stand is seen almost as an insult to the harsh lockdown most Australians had to endure. But to an asylum-seeker who has been confined to the detention centre for nine years, Djokovic’s presence could be a boon.
Mehdi, a refugee who has spent nine years in detention, told Guardian Australia: “There is a disappointment: everyone wants to ask me about Novak, what the hotel is like for him. But they don’t ask about us. “I’ve never seen so many cameras, so much attention. I hope Novak Djokovic learns about our situation here, and I hope he speaks about it.”
