US President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed into law the first federal legislation to make lynching a federal hate crime after the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent this month.
The legislation is named after 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in a racist attack in Mississippi in 1955 — an event that drew national attention to the atrocities and violence that African Americans faced in the US.
It has been 100 years since the idea of such legislation was first proposed.
Mr Biden acknowledged the long delay during his remarks in the Rose Garden to lawmakers, administration officials and civil rights advocates, stressing how the violent deaths of black Americans were used to intimidate them and prevent them from voting simply because of their skin colour.
“Thank you for never giving up, never ever giving up,” the president said. “Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.”
The bill makes it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury. A conviction would carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
“After 100-plus years and 200-plus failed attempts to outlaw lynching, the Senate took long-overdue action by passing the Emmett Till Antilynching Act,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer when the upper chamber passed the bill.
“This is an important step, but that it's taken so long is a stain on America,” he tweeted.
The bill passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 422-3. Republicans Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas voted against the legislation.
The president stressed that forms of racial terror continue to exist in the US — creating the need for the law.
“Racial hate isn’t an old problem — it’s a persistent problem,” Mr Biden said. “Hate never goes away. It only hides.”
Emmett was murdered after Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, claimed he had propositioned her at the family-owned grocery store where she worked.
His mutilated body was found in a river three days later. Emmett's mother insisted his remains be displayed in an open casket so the world could see the atrocities that were committed.
Ms Dunham's husband, Roy Bryant, and J W Milam, his half-brother, were arrested for Emmett's murder but were acquitted by an all-white jury. They later admitted to a magazine that they had killed him.
Roy Bryant died in 1994 and Milam died in 1981.
The Department of Justice reopened the investigation into Emmett's murder in 2018. Ms Bryant, now known as Carolyn Donham, recanted evidence she had given, but the Justice Department said she “denied to the FBI that she ever recanted her testimony".
The department ended its investigation in December.
Reuters contributed to this report
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21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari, Jonathan Cape
History's medical milestones
1799 - First small pox vaccine administered
1846 - First public demonstration of anaesthesia in surgery
1861 - Louis Pasteur published his germ theory which proved that bacteria caused diseases
1895 - Discovery of x-rays
1923 - Heart valve surgery performed successfully for first time
1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1953 - Structure of DNA discovered
1952 - First organ transplant - a kidney - takes place
1954 - Clinical trials of birth control pill
1979 - MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, scanned used to diagnose illness and injury.
1998 - The first adult live-donor liver transplant is carried out
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
