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ANOTHER diplomatic row is brewing between Indonesia and Malaysia, after the wife of a Jakarta diplomat was allegedly mistaken for an illegal immigrant and arrested.
Indonesia has condemned the incident as 'unacceptable', but Malaysia has denied that the woman was arrested.
Madam Muslianah Nurdin, who is married to Indonesia's education and culture attache, was shopping in Kuala Lumpur last week when the incident occurred, the Indonesian embassy said in a statement late on Monday.
The embassy said she was detained by a Malaysian volunteer force called Rela, even though she showed her diplomatic identification. She was released some time later.
"They treated her like an illegal immigrant...It's unacceptable," said embassy official Shanti Utami Retnaningsih.
"This incident shows disrespect to members of our embassy."
However, Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak was quoted by Bernama news agency as saying: "The report is incorrect. She was not detained. Rela officers took some time to verify her diplomatic pass."
But the Indonesian embassy said: "She showed her card to the officer, who claimed that he did not recognise it. She was detained and placed with other illegal immigrants.
"Based on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the Rela officer has violated international laws by showing disrespect to a member of the embassy."
Rela has allegedly been involved in another incident in which the door to the apartment of an Indonesian student who had valid documents was broken down.
The 450,000-strong volunteer force has been deployed to hunt down illegal immigrants, and has powers to make arrests and search and enter premises without warrants.
The latest incidents come shortly after Kuala Lumpur had formally apologised to Jakarta over the alleged assault of an Indonesian karate referee by police in August, an incident that sparked a furore in Indonesia.
And just last week, a minor spat broke out after Indonesians became angry about the use of the folk song Rasa Sayang (meaning 'Feelings of Love' in Malay) in Malaysia's Truly Asia tourism campaign.
Indonesia argued that the song originated in the country, and that Malaysia had no right to use it to promote tourism.
But Malaysia rejects this claim, saying the song is from the Malay archipelago, which includes Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The spat has led to calls for a boycott of Malaysian products in Indonesia.
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