There are presently 2,787 people who are being detained under various laws without having faced formal charges as of Oct 9, according to the Prison Department records.

The breakdown is as follows:

  • 600 individuals held under the Prevention of Crime Act 1959 (Poca);

  • 18 individuals held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2015;

  • 1,829 held under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952; and,

  • 340 individuals held under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma).

The data was revealed by the Home Ministry in a parliamentary written reply to Selayang MP William Leong.

Leong had also sought the breakdown of detainees according to the detention centres. This question was not answered in the written reply.

In 2011, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak announced the repeal of the most infamous preventive detention law, the Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) to promote democracy, among other reasons.

Up until the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi administration, the ISA was repeatedly used to detain opposition figures, journalists and activists, among others, for up to two years.

However, critics pointed out that the Najib administration quickly amended existing laws and also created new ones, such as Sosma, which allows for ISA-like detention without adequate safeguards.

Sosma was used to detain former lower rung Umno leader Khairuddin Abu Hassan and lawyer Matthias Chang after the duo filed reports on the 1MDB affair to jurisdictions abroad.

The same law was also used to detain Bersih leader Maria Chin Abdullah in the run-up to the Bersih 5 rally last year. No charges were laid against Maria.