India pushes for release of rioters

United Arab Emirates police arrested more than 3,000 mostly Indian workers after a dining room riot at a construction site in which a manager, security guards and the workers were beaten up, India's ambassador said on Wedesday.

The ambassador, Talmiz Ahmad, said that the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi was now seeking the release of those not involved in the riot and had made an official approach to the government.

"A total of 3,147 mostly Indian workers were arrested after a small group had a violent altercation in the dining room with the mess manager" at a construction site in the northern emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah on Friday evening, the diplomat told newswire AFP by telephone from the capital Abu Dhabi.

"They beat up the manager and security guards, and they were also beaten up. The police were called," he said.

"We have informed the UAE government officially through a note and unofficially that while we totally condemn violence, we believe that people not involved in the violence should be released immediately," the envoy said.

Ahmad said the workers were being held in prisons in several of the seven emirates making up the UAE.

Indian diplomats have not had access to the detainees, but sent a fact-finding team to the site of the riot and had spoken to managers of the company that employs the workers and police, he said.

"We have offered to help identify those involved in the violence," he said, adding that the embassy was seeking to meet the interior minister and undersecretary over the issue.

He said there were several versions of what sparked the violence.

"We heard that the workers were complaining about the quality of the food. We also heard that they were complaining that managers have a different mess. [Another theory is that] the workers were intoxicated," Ahmad said.

The violence is the latest to hit construction and other working sites in the UAE, an oil-rich Gulf country in the midst of an economic boom where hundreds of thousands of mostly Asian low-paid labourers are employed.

The protests, which have multiplied since last year despite a ban on public protests, have been mainly over low or withheld pay and poor living conditions.

Indians have been involved in several of the protests. In February, the local press reported that a court in the emirate of Dubai sentenced 45 Indian construction workers to six months in jail followed by deportation over a violent protest to demand wage increases.

But Ahmad said he did "not see any broad pattern in these grievances... I believe that in such episodes, only small numbers are involved."

Ahmad said that 65 percent of the estimated 1.5 million Indians residing in the UAE are blue-collar workers.

Indians form the largest community in the UAE, a country where citizens make up only about 15 percent of a population of 5.6 million, according to a recent unofficial study.