Brunei police are probing the death of a Malaysian woman found encased in a block of cement in her friend’s garden, in the latest violent death to shock the sultanate.
Voon Su Ching, 39, was reported missing by her husband on Feb. 13 after she did not return home from an errand to buy their son’s birthday cake.
Police found her body five days later at the home of a friend, who had asked her to check on the property while she went traveling over the Lunar New Year holiday.
Royal Brunei Police Force spokesman Pengiran Abdul Salam Ghani said an autopsy had been completed and police were awaiting the postmortem examination report to establish the cause of death.
Abdul Salam denied reports in the Malaysian media that a suspect had been detained. He declined to comment further on the investigation.
Voon, who hails from Malaysia’s Sarawak state on Borneo island, which borders Brunei, ran a car wash business in the sultanate and lived with her husband and son.
The discovery of her body on Monday caused a stir among locals as sniffer dogs and police vans arrived, with photographs of the scene going viral on social media.
The bungalow where the body was found is still being examined by police.
Malaysian newspaper The Star reported that Voon’s body had been found after the owner discovered a 3m high block of cement in her garden, with a stench coming from it.
Violent crime is unusual in Brunei, an oil-rich sultanate on the north coast of Borneo, with a population of just under 400,000 people.
However, a recent series of alarming deaths have unsettled the tight-knit community.
These include the brutal stabbing of a 62-year-old man, the murder of an Indonesian hardware store worker and the killing of a two-year-old girl who was punched and kicked to death by her mother’s boyfriend.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese