Scandal at AO: Security confuses Serbian and Russian flags, wanted to call police to arrest our fans

Photo: Twitter / Printscreen

A huge scandal happened yesterday before the match between Novak Djokovic and Alex de Minaur at the Australian Open, after security did not allow our fans to enter the stands to support the best Serbian tennis player.

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The reason is even more bizarre. Security confused the Serbian flag with the Russian and after some persuasion, a gentleman employed to maintain order opened a booklet illustrated with the flags of the world in order to proceed to compare the flag that the Serbian fan was carrying on his back with the ones in the booklet.

To make things even funnier, in addition to the Serbian flag, which is of course allowed at the Australian Open, the book also includes the flags of Slovenia, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Croatia, and even Paraguay, because they all "resemble" the Russian one, which is banned at Australian Open because to the current events in the east of Europe.

However, even after the security man checked the flags in the booklet, he remained convinced that ours was the Russian flag, which is why he wanted to call the police on the Serb fans, but they persisted and wanted to get a just resolution. But then a scandalous comment followed.

"You also hate Croats? You are a "f***ing racist"," said the security gentleman, and then came a fan's reply:

"No, I love everything from Yugoslavia - Croats, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Slovenians, Macedonians... I also love Russians, as I love everyone else. Look, red, blue, white, that's the flag of Serbia," was the answer.

Australian Open 🇦🇺 security tried to confiscate the Serbian flag 🇷🇸 from Novak Djokovic's fans, confusing it with the Russian 🇷🇺 which is banned at this tournament. They had to open a special booklet to identify the flag. pic.twitter.com/Ngqe5a3eZ2— Based Serbia (@SerbiaBased) January 23, 2023

After a few minutes of persuasion, a young woman who assisted the guard showed a lot more composure and realized that this was really was the flag of Serbia, so she let our fans through to the stands.

See how it all played out in the video.

(Telegraf.rs)