Canberra has offered a long-term Australian resident it deported to Serbia temporary housing and medical checks in Belgrade where he had been camping outside Australia's embassy, but is standing by its decision not to allow him back into the country, officials said yesterday.
Robert Jovicic, 38, has told reporters he was deported to Serbia, a country he had never set foot in, in June last year despite having lived in Australia for 36 years.
He arrived as a two-year-old in Australia in 1968 from France, where he was born, along with his Serbian-born parents, brother and sister.
But last year, the government deported him after he had been imprisoned for committing a string of burglaries to buy heroin.
For two nights this week, Jovicic had camped outside the Australian embassy in Belgrade to publicize his bid to return to Australia, Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) TV reported on Wednesday.
"I've explained to the embassy if I'm considered trash that I will rot on Australian soil," Jovicic told the ABC, indicating he was prepared to die on the embassy steps.
"I cannot survive here," he said.
Jovicic's case comes amid criticism of Australian immigration authorities for wrongfully deporting one of its own citizens to the Philippines and locking up a German-born Australian national in an Outback detention center for months because officials thought both women were illegal immigrants.
RSS