A rights group urged Malaysia on Monday to scrap a planned crackdown on illegal immigrants, warning deportations would worsen the humanitarian crisis in areas hard hit by tsunamis spawned by a huge quake.

The government must "take into account the humanitarian crisis created by this disaster, and to put a halt to its mass deportation exercise of illegal immigrants planned for January 2005," the National Human Rights Society said.

"Deporting migrants to unstable, disaster-stricken areas would contribute to the humanitarian crisis," the group's secretary general Elizabeth Wong said in a statement.

The move would also "place unnecessary pressure on the Indonesian, Thai and India governments, who are struggling with the enormity of such a tragedy," Wong said.

Instead, the Malaysian government should "provide emergency assistance to victims in the region," as regular supplies of basic necessities have been severely disrupted, she said.

More than 22,000 people were killed across Asia by the tidal waves, many of them in countries whose nationals have been targeted in the Malaysian crackdown.

The conflict-battered and impoverished Indonesian province of Aceh was particularly hard hit.

Under criticism

Rights groups have warned that thousands of Acehnese could be caught up in the nationwide sweep in January aimed at ridding Malaysia of more than one million illegal immigrants.

Malaysia has announced that it will deploy more than half a million members of volunteer organisations to track down and detain the estimated 1.2 million illegal immigrants in the country, mainly from Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines but also from India and Bangladesh.

Rights groups have criticised the move, with Amnesty International saying it could lead to abuses and Human Rights Watch describing it as "ominous".