More than100 former Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees have registered a club which will be launched this Sunday and one of its aims will be to campaign for the abolishment of the controversial security law.

Contacted today, its organising committee head Yong Chin Lai said the club will comprise mainly of detainees above the age of 50 who were detained during the 60s and 80s, majority of them being members of the now defunct Labour party.

"We wish that with the establishment of this club, we could gather more ex-ISA detainees, encourage, show support and remind each other that we were detained because of our struggle for a democratic society," he said.

However, Yong said the club will first focus on recruiting more members before embarking on any activity to call for the abolishment of the ISA. Currently, the club has 120 members.

According to him the members are from Kuala Lumpur but the club hopes to open up branches in other states as well.

"I believed some 400-500 people were detained during that time" he said, adding that the club's current office was in Cheras.

Opposition campaigns

Yong said at the moment the ex-detainees were not planing to join forces with opposition parties in campaigning against the security law.

"But we strongly support several campaigns such as the Abolish ISA Movement or AIM," he said.

"Many of us could be considered as senior citizens already, we just hope this is a place for our reunion. We need to reunite all the detainees," he added.

Yong, 60, was detained in 1976 at his work place in Petaling Jaya for his alleged links to the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and involvement in underground activities.

He was put in the Kamunting detention centre in Perak for four years and freed in the mid-1980s. He was the People Party's Kajang branch chief then.

99 still in detention

Meanwhile, Yong said Sunday's event was merely to mark an "official" launch for the club as most of these ex-detainees have kept in touch over the years.

The launch will be held at the Confucian High School in the city at 10am.

The ISA was enacted by the British to combat the communist insurgency but the law earned notoriety when it was used against opposition politicians and activists over the years.

Among its more recent victims, were five Keadilan leaders and a malaysiakini columnist-cum-filmmaker. The six underwent a two-year detention period before being released early this month.

They were accused of planning to topple the government through militant means, a charge which they vehemently denied.

At present 99 people still detained under the Act. Among the detainees are 58 members of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI), 18 of Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM) and 15 of the Al-Ma'unah, the three militant organisations operating in Malaysia.

The rest of the detainees are made up of those involved in various illegal and subversive activities such as firearms smuggling, Free Aceh Movement, international terrorism, document falsification and illegal immigrants syndicate.