Brutal death of woman found headless in Salcombe may have been 'racially motivated'

Devon and Cornwall Police are still investigating the "unexplained" death of pensioner Mee Kuen Chong from London, whose headless body was found 200 miles from her home in Salcombe. But an Asian anti-race hate campaign group suspects that her death could have been "racially motivated."

67-year-old Mrs. Chong, from Wembley, was reported missing on June 10 and her decapitated body was later discovered in a wooded area off Bennett Road on June 27 at 5:00 p.m. While authorities continue to investigate and question locals who may know of her whereabouts with the release of a new picture of the deceased, Hau-Yu Tam, chair of the "End the Virus of Racism" campaign, wants to know if the police are considering the case as an Asian hate crime.

Mrs. Tam, who also started the "Help Bring Mee Kuen Home" campaign, believes Mrs. Chong's death was racially motivated because she was Malaysian, although she had been living in Wembley since 2004.

"I am going to be writing to the Brent and Metropolitan Police. It's very hard to say at this stage but we definitely think it could have been a racially motivated matter. There is a lot of soft-pedalling around race hate crimes," she said in a report from Devon Live.

"It's only in the last year and a half that racism against the East and Southeast Asian community has risen into the public consciousness. If this is racially aggravated, why tip-toe around that fact?" she added.

Mrs. Tam also considered Mrs. Chong's race as the reason for the lack of publicity about her disappearance. She compared it to the widespread media coverage for the disappearance of white woman Sarah Everard, whose body was found six days after she was reported missing.

"I was just putting out Tweets around my networks because I noticed there was not much attention about Mee Kuen's disappearance. I wish it could have been more and we could have got a different outcome," she lamented and said the response to the pensioner's disappearance "was quite muted unlike when Sarah Everard was missing and so many people tweeted about that."

Mrs. Tam claimed that just because Mrs. Chong "was an older Asian woman, there didn't seem to be any interest at all." She expressed her disbelief at the brutal way the Londoner died and acknowledged that it is causing distress to a lot of people knowing that her body was found without its head.

Heavy police presence is expected to last in the coming days around Salcombe, as the investigation on Mrs. Chong's death continues. Authorities are asking those with knowledge about her whereabouts between the 10th and 27th of June to "email 101@dc.police.uk or telephone 101, quoting reference number 0700 of Sunday 27 June."