to convince them to leave for two hours after which the police were allowed in," a spokesman at the French Foreign Ministry said, adding that the Malaysian security forces had acted with the "greatest humanity". Police in Kuala Lumpur on Friday also removed immigrants from the Swiss and Bruneian embassies, but a group of eight Indonesians remained in the U.S. embassy compound more than 11 hours after they had scaled its walls to get in. The Kuala Lumpur-based human rights group Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) condemned the French, Swiss and Bruneians for giving police access to their compounds. But the French said Malaysian authorities had assured them that the eight were illegal workers. "They were social and economic refugees and therefore not political refugees," the ministry spokesman said. He added that the immigrants had been evicted "without violence or incident".

Autor: Reiters