Malaysian police have set up a special police task force to investigate mobile telephone text messages amid fears they could incite racial violence,the Star newspaper reported Friday.
The paper said police have arrested two more men for sending the messages,taking the total to four detained under a tough security law that allows them to be held without trial.
The crackdown comes as Malaysia celebrates 50 years of independence from Britain with a focus on racial harmony.
"We are not taking this matter lightly. We want to get to the root of this problem and will not hesitate to arrest anyone involved in disrupting the security of the state,"acting police chief Mohamad Mokhtar Mohamad Shariff said.
He did not give details of the alleged text messages,but said they were"malicious"and untrue rumours that had been sent across the country.
Race relations have become an increasingly fraught issue in Malaysia,which has a Muslim majority but vaunts its multicultural status.
A series of court cases -- notably on conversions from Islam -- has called that status into question,while activists have been campaigning for greater religious freedoms in a nation where proselytizing by other faiths is banned.
Last November,text messages about rumours that ethnic Muslim Malays would be baptised as Christians sparked a large Muslim protest in the northern state of Perak.
It led to a government warning that the Internal Security Act could be used on anyone spreading texts which could cause instability.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Friday appealed for racial unity in his independence day speech,delivered to a crowd of about 60,000 flag-waving Malaysians.