Chong's headless body was found in Devon, 200 miles away from her home
An Asian anti-hate group is suspecting that the death of Mee Kuen Chong was “racially motivated.”
Mee Kuen Chong, 67, was last seen alive in her home area of Wembley, London on 10 June. A missing persons report was issued to the Metropolitan Police one day after.
Chong’s decapitated body has since been found in woodland near the coastal town of Salcombe, Devon – over 200 miles away from Wembley.
Hau-Yu Tam, the chair of the anti-race-hate campaign group End the Virus of Racism, said the group is fighting to publicise Chong’s story and has set up a Help Bring Mee Kuen Home campaign.
“I was just putting out Tweets around my networks because I noticed there was not much attention about Mee Kuen’s disappearance,” Tam said.
“I wish it could have been more and we could have got a different outcome.
“There are questions to answer about why there wasn’t more rallying around and sharing after her disappearance that the London East and South-East Asian community want answered.”
Tam compared Chong’s disappearance to the wide publicity of Sarah Everard.
“Why was it not more widely reported when she disappeared? It seemed like the response was quite muted – unlike when Sarah Everard was missing and so many people tweeted about that.”
“To a lesser extent when the young black boy disappeared there was widespread media interest – both sadly ended in deaths like in this case. But because she was an older Asian woman, there didn’t seem to be any interest at all.
“Who would have thought something like this would happen? The fact that it’s being reported that she was found without her head is obviously distressing people a lot.”
Tam said the group believes Chong’s death is race-related. “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.”
“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?”
Anyone with information is asked to email 101@dc.police.uk or phone 101, quoting reference number 0700 of 27 June.
In other news, Half Chinese British wildcard Emma Raducanu has beaten Marketa Vondrousova to reach the third round of Wimbledon.