Indonesian Factory Workers Riot in Malaysia NILAI, Malaysia (Reuters) - Hundreds of Indonesian workers from a Malaysian textile factory hurled stones, chairs and bottles at police on Thursday after officers tried to detain some of their colleagues suspected of taking drugs.
The violence broke out after a team of narcotics officers raided a five-story hostel housing Indonesian workers from a factory in Nilai town in the western state of Negeri Sembilan, police told reporters. Police said 16 workers had tested positive for drugs, but they only managed to detain two before the rioting broke out, during which one police car was overturned and others damaged. Some 800 workers were at the hostel at the time, police said, although they were unsure how many were involved in the riot early on Thursday. No one was injured in the incident. Officials from the Indonesian Embassy in the capital Kuala Lumpur arrived at the hostel later on Thursday to hand over to police the remaining 14 workers who escaped detention. Police said they had decided not to take further action against the rioters after consulting with the embassy. Negeri Sembilan Deputy Police Chief Kamarulzaman Itam was quoted by the official Bernama news agency as saying that no worker was detained over the rioting and that police did not plan to press charges against them. But Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said police should take action. ``I hope that police can take action against those who have committed crimes and deport the others,'' he was quoted by Bernama as saying. Abdullah, who is also home (interior) minister, directed the police to conduct an immediate investigation. ``Whoever has committed an offence will have to face action,'' he said. The protest comes just over a month after more than 1,600 illegal Indonesian immigrants at a detention camp in southern Johor state rioted and burned down some of their quarters. Malaysia is home to more than a million foreign workers, most of them from poorer neighbors Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines.
