President Joe Biden, who took office at a time of political crisis in the United States, receives this Thursday (9) representatives from more than 100 countries for a Summit for Democracy, much criticized by China and Russia, and of which they were eight countries in the Americas were excluded.
For the White House, the meeting, which will be virtual due to the pandemic, embodies the US leadership in an existential struggle between democracies and dictatorships or autocracies.
“Make no mistake, we are at a moment of democratic evaluation,” said Uzra Zeya, Undersecretary of State for Civil Security, Democracy and Human Rights.
“It’s no secret that democracies around the world face increasing challenges from new and innovative threats. Countries in practically all regions of the world have experienced degrees of democratic backlash”, he warns.
Biden will open the meeting with a speech, which for two days will bring together representatives from nearly 100 governments, as well as NGOs, businesses, philanthropic organizations and legislatures.
But the background is worrisome: American democratic rules were challenged by Donald Trump, with his attempt to reverse the 2020 election result.
And even before the meeting, a tense atmosphere was created about who should join and who should be left out of the list.
China and Russia, which Biden considers autocracies, were deliberately left out, which, according to these countries, encourages an “ideological breach”.
“No country has the right to judge the vast and varied political landscape of the world with a single criterion,” wrote Anatoly Antonov and Qin Gang, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors in Washington.
What angered Beijing was the US government’s invitation to Taiwan, a democratically governed island that mainland China considers part of its territory, although not under its control.
On Monday, Washington also announced that it will not send government officials to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February to protest human rights violations, including the “genocide” against the Uighur ethnic group in the Xinjiang region.
Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have joined the diplomatic boycott, but their athletes will compete in the Games. And once again Russia joined China in criticizing the decision.
Deciding when other countries should be excluded from the meeting for human rights violations or electoral fraud was also complicated.
For example, Pakistan and the Philippines are in, while the nationalist government of Hungary, a member of the European Union, is left out. Brazilian right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro was invited, while the president of Turkey – a NATO member country -, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was out.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the governments of eight countries were excluded: Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and Venezuela, but Juan Guaidó, Venezuelan leader opposing Nicolás Maduro, was invited.
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