Nearly 13,000 tourists and foreign students were arrested in Malaysia over the past three years for involvement in immoral activities, especially prostitution, local media reported today.

Deputy Home Affairs minister Chor Chee Heung revealed that 12,888 tourists and foreign students had been detained in that time.

More than 5,100 of them were caught for prostitution and deported last year, he said.

Malaysia, Chor noted, was a tourist and education attraction following the aggressive promotions carried out locally and abroad.

"However, this has also brought about many social ills like prostitution and other crimes, which are a bane to Malaysia's image," Chor was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times .

Last year's deportations included 2,155 Indonesians, 1,230 Chinese, 946 Thais, 298 Vietnamese, 189 Filipinos, 138 Uzbeks and 125 Cambodians.

Others were from Russia, India, Laos, Bangladesh, Poland, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka.

Special committee

In 2001, 4,132 tourists and foreign students were caught for illegal activities, and 3,607 in 2000.

Last year, there were 73,000 foreign students from 144 countries, mainly Indonesia and China, studying in institutions of higher education here.

Concern over the rising trend of tourists and foreign students being involved in vice has caused the government to set up a committee to study ways to combat the problem.

Chor said the committee would come up with proposals to check and eliminate such activities. AFP