Controversy over the song's provenance came to a head in 2007 when the Malaysian Tourism Board released the Rasa Sayang Commercial, an advertisement used as part of Malaysia's "Truly Asia" tourism campaign.Some Indonesians have accused Malaysia of heritage theft. Indonesian news sites reported that it is a song of the Maluku Islands, that it has appeared in early Indonesian films and recordings, and that the songwriter was a Moluccan teacher born in 1907 by the name of Paulus Pea. Around a thousand Indonesians demonstrated outside the Malaysian embassy in Jakarta in November 2007 to protest the use of "Rasa Sayang" and other cultural items such as Reog Ponorogo in such adverts. In order to prevent what they considered cultural appropriation, the Indonesian government started making an inventory of such songs as cultural properties of the country. Malaysia in turn argued that the song is widely sung throughout the Malay Archipelago, and that it belongs to people of archipelago, Malaysians and Indonesians alike. In cases where people have been migrating, trading and intermingling for centuries in a region, it may be difficult to make claim of cultural property. Malaysian Tourism Minister Adnan Mansor stated, "It is a folk song from the Nusantara (Malay Archipelago) and we are part of the Nusantara.".The Malaysian Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage, Rais Yatim, recognize that Rasa Sayange is a shared property, between Indonesia and Malaysia.
