The media in China has criticised Malaysia for not sending a representative from the police force to Beijing to explain the alleged mistreatment of Chinese nationals here.

In a front-page report, the Beijing Morning Post questioned why there was no representative from the police in the delegation headed by Home Minister Azmi Khalid.

Azmi was instructed by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to go to China and explain the recent allegations of Chinese nationals becoming victims of police abuse in Malaysia.

The newspaper's report had also mentioned the controversial video-clip that depicted a nude woman, believed to be of Chinese origin, being forced to do ear squats in a police station.

The clip, exposed by an opposition parliamentarian, had caused a massive uproar leading the premier to form a independent commission to probe the incident.

It was also revealed that the recent cases had affected tourist arrivals from China.

PM's orders

Meanwhile, Azmi disagreed with the criticism from the Chinese media regarding the absence of a police representative in his delegation.

"The police is headed by the prime minister and I am here on the orders of the prime minister himself," he was quoted as saying by Bernama.

"So what I say here has been ordered by the prime minister," he told Malaysian reporters in Beijing.

On Tuesday, Azmi Khalid said the Malaysian government would await the completion of the inquiry into the video-clip before deciding if it needed to apologise for the incident.

"We're very sad that in the last few months we have been receiving very bad news of things happening to citizens from China. All this makes the people of Malaysia as a whole very, very angry," he added.

The mistreatment of Chinese citizens in Malaysia involves not just the alleged police abuse, caught on videotape, but also criminal acts, according to Azmi.

"There was a case of murder, there was a case of rape. This was outside our control, actually, but we apologise because we don't like to see this happen.

"But for those done by government agencies, we are still investigating, and we will not know until the inquiry is completed," he added.