Beijing on Tuesday condemned a Chinese citizen who triggered a protest by more than 1,000 Cambodian workers after tearing up a poster of the country's late king, Norodom Sihanouk.

The woman, a supervisor at the Top World garment factory in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, had accused employees of skipping work during a week of official mourning for Sihanouk, who died in Beijing on Oct 15.

She seized and destroyed a portrait of the late monarch as the workers gathered around two pictures of him.