In the Balkans, the Djokovic saga is about much more than tennis
(Editorial published in The Times on January 11, 2022)
The drama surrounding Novak Djokovic’s detention in Australia has become the biggest news item of the young year that is 2022.
Though tennis and sports reporters have been following the issue of Serbian champion’s participation in Australian Open with incessant attention, his own stance on the vaccines, the histrionic press conferences of his family members (where the multi-millionaire tennis player’s visa travails were compared to the suffering of Jesus Christ), as well as statements by the Serbian government leadership accusing Australia of a “witch-hunt”, have ensured that political reporters also pay attention to the political backlash and the wider context of Djokovic’s situation down under.
In the Western Balkans, the drama in Melbourne has taken the front pages of all newspapers, the timelines in all social media, and has provoked yet another division along ethnic lines.
Most Kosovan, Croatian and Bosniak Twitter feeds oozes of certain joyous atmospherics with every bit of news coming where Djokovic’s situation deteriorates, while the most popular Serbian media outlets, long known for their nationalist and far right slant, have gone on hyperdrive reporting about utter lack of rule of law in Australia and the permanent status of victimhood Serbs must always endure at the hand of “the Western powers”.
As the former Serbian national tennis selector Bogdan Obradovic stated — using somewhat quaint but rather costumery language in the Serbian media landscape: “We [Serbs] can’t expect anything else from Anglo-Saxons. The relationship of Anglo-Saxons towards Novak is same like [sic] Thomas Edison had towards [Nikola] Tesla. We are always turned more towards the East, which is why the West is punishing us”.
Some may wonder, does it have to be this way? Must we embed the Balkan ethnic narratives and Balkan-centric understanding of global geopolitics in every debate?
Well, the short answer is no. Folks in the region, myself included, do have a tendency to look at every and each sports and cultural news, even cooking recipes (remember the regional outrage when British Kosovan pop star Dua Lipa named the popular bread spread ajvar “an albanian dish”), in the prism of local dichotomies and antagonisms.
Yet, attention given to Novak is not a mere irrational schadenfreude reflecting the regional petty differences. One must pay a bit deeper attention about what he has represented, especially in the last few years of pandemics, in order to understand some of the fury released on social media.
In recent years Djokovic not shied away from controversies, and his globally known novaxx stance and his new-age, pseudo-science statements are potentially the least dangerous bits.
The world’s number one tennis player has embraced a far more sinister agenda and characters, which provokes a deep anxiety across Balkans, a region bracing for a new series of crisis caused by the resurgent nationalism in Serbian political circles.
Djokovic has been vocal about his fascination with the late Serbian far right pseudo-historian and conspiracy theorist Jovan Deretic, whose books on Serbian “race and people” have been a staple of Serbian nationalist press for decades.
After the Serbian national team won the ATP Cup in 2020, Djokovic sang nationalist songs, including “Vidovdan” — a song that marked many massacres committed by Serbian units during Yugoslav wars. Only last year again, Djokovic was also pictured sitting next to a former commander of a military unit that participated in Srebrenica genocide.
The narrative supported by Djokovic has already hit Oceania hard — the gunman who killed 49 people in a terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand was an admirer of Serbian nationalist figures, and he played a song honoring Radovan Karadzic before opening fire.
Djokovic was also notably silent and didn’t show the solidarity he expects in Melbourn from his peers, when Serbian nationalist tabloids went on a rampage against a young Kosovan Serb girl tennis player who was considering to play for Kosovo, a neighboring country that Serbia is yet to recognize.
Indeed, it’s ironic to read the calls by the Serbian PM to Australia to allow Djokovc to play in Melbourne, when International Olympic Committee just recently berated Serbia for preventing Kosovo to participate in sporting events in Serbia and threatened Belgrade “with international events hosting ban”.
Thus what happens with Novak in the courtroom — and tennis court — in faraway Australia, for many people in Balkans is not about visas, tennis or even vaccines. It’s far more personal and unfortunately painful, and Djokovic has become only the most recent icon of times and events that brings back the traumas of unhealed wounds.
Petrit Selimi is former Foreign minister of Republic of Kosovo
