Malaysia is to demolish a memorial built by former Vietnamese boat people on a northern island where they were interned in the 1970s, reports said today.

Officials in Terengganu said the construction had never been approved and was to be destroyed on the orders of the Foreign Ministry, acting in response to a complaint from the Vietnamese government.

"We have to take into account the relationship between the Malaysian and Vietnamese governments on the issue," state secretary Muhatar Abdullah told the official Bernama news agency.

The monument on Bidong island, which was built in March, speaks of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people who perished as they fled their homeland.

Bidong is among several places in Asia that bore the brunt of the exodus of Vietnamese asylum-seekers after the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975 and, later, "economic" refugees who followed in the 1980s and 90s.

Some 245,133 Vietnamese boat people passed through Bidong between 1978 and 1990, Bernama said.

The decision to demolish the memorial has reportedly triggered angry opposition from the Vietnamese diaspora, and appeals to the Malaysian government to reconsider.