GENEVA - The UN refugee agency has protested to the Malaysian government over the arrest of more than 400 asylum seekers from Indonesia's war-torn Aceh province, said a spokesman.

Some 400 Acehnese refugees were arrested last week as they approached the United Nations High Commission for Refugees' (UNHCR) office in Kuala Lumpur, with another 40 detained yesterday , said UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski in Geneva.

"We have since protested to the Malaysian government expressing our concerns," he said.

"They were detained by the Malaysian police as they tried to approach the UNHCR office to seek asylum which is their right," Janowski continued.

Illegals or refugees

The UNHCR has stopped registering refugees in Kuala Lumpur as there are now Malaysian police stationed outside their offices.

Instead, the agency is now seeking to process the refugees at Langkap detention centre in Perak, opposite Aceh across the narrow Malacca Strait.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said that "it is not right for UNHCR to register the Acehnese as possible refugees when they are not refugees."

Malaysia, which is not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees, does not recognise refugees or asylum seekers, he said.

"If we encourage refugees to come to Malaysia, all the illegals will want to come," he said.

Right to asylum

But the UNHCR accused the Malaysian government of sapping the right to asylum, as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Indonesia launched a massive operation to crush separatist guerrillas of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) on May 19 and says more than 700 rebels have been killed since then.

Human rights activists and other groups have questioned whether the military figures for rebel deaths also include civilians. - AFP