By Isabelle Wilson-
Belarusian and Russian flags have been banned from the Australian Open, the governing body for tennis in Australia said on Tuesday, after fans displayed a Russian flag at a first-round match between a Russian and Ukrainian player a day earlier led to the police and security being called.
The ban was in response to a Russian flag that was unfurled at Rod Laver Arena during Daniil Medvedev’s clash with American Marcos Giron.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand Vasyl Myroshnychenko condemned the display of a Ukranian flag on twitter due to restrictions imposed in Russia from having representatives form participating in the competition.
The ambassador said: “I strongly condemn the public display of the Russian flag during the game of the Ukrainian tennis player Kateryna Baindl at the Australian Open today,” Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand Vasyl Myroshnychenko wrote on Twitter.
“I call on Tennis Australia to immediately enforce its ‘neutral flag’ policy.
The men’s and women’s tennis tours responded by preventing players from collecting points from the tournament that count toward overall rankings.
“Our initial policy was that fans could bring them in but could not use them to cause disruption,” Tennis Australia, the governing body, said in a statement, referring to the flags. “Yesterday we had an incident where a flag was placed courtside.”
In line with the Australian government’s policy on Russian and Belarusian athletes, the Australian Open has allowed players from those countries to compete.
Participating athletes are only allowed to compete independently and the flags by their names on screens around the tournament have been removed or replaced by white boxes.
Similar bans of flag displaying by Russians were introduced in other sports including track and field, football and figure skating.
Other countries not restricted by bans proudly displayed their national flags and symbols on the first day of the tournament, in Melbourne.
Croatian fans displayed shirts emblazoned with the red-and-white Croatian checkerboard to cheer on Borna Coric against the Czech player Jiri Lehecka or holding aloft South African and Italian flags as Lloyd Harris of South Africa faced off against Lorenzo Musetti of Italy.
However, when the Russian flag was displayed at the match between Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia and Kateryna Baindl Ukrainian fanscalled the police and the security staff to the court, saying that Russian supporters were acting in a menacing way.
In a post on Twitter in the hours after the match, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, the Ukrainian ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, condemned the display at the match, which the Ukrainian player won. “I call on Tennis Australia to immediately enforce its ‘neutral flag’ policy,” he wrote.