SUMMARY
The CPT (Communist Party of Thailand) was formed as the “Communist Party of Siam” in 1930. In December 1942 a Party program and constitution were adopted and the party entered into the political arena. CPT was part of a volatile political landscape, and in 1947, a coup changed the political context in Thailand by putting more power in the hands of the military.
The CPT garnered the majority of its popular support from the working-class Thais; it oversaw several unions and organized strikes against employers who in their view treated the workers unfairly. The overarching idea of communism in Southeast Asia was sensitive as China acted as a strong backer for any group with communist aspirations in the region. The Korean War, and later the Vietnam War, further fueled the animosities between the communist parties in South East Asian countries and governments who received support from the US, among them the Thai government.
In the context of the struggling democratization in Thailand, and the police's violent repression of demonstrations, the CPT decided that their struggle would have to be armed in order for them to achieve their goals. So during a Party Congress in September 1961, a 12-point program was formulated that included concrete preparations for an armed struggle.
Information on the leadership of CPT is scarce and hard to verify as the organization itself was highly secretive, and the structure of the party seemed to be very de-centralized. A seven-man Politburo, which had a 25-man Central Committee under it, and local provincial committees that in turn had sub-districts down to village level, led the CPT. This leadership structure meant that no one-person-leader personified the movement. The decentralized structure ensured that the CPT could secure support from local villagers as the party managed to set up local networks and function as a parallel government.
Initially, CPT carried out political assassinations, but in the summer of 1965, they began targeting various Thai state institutions and personnel, mainly police patrols. The majority of the incidents took place in the northeast of the country where there were plenty of illegal arms in circulation. The northeast regions of Thailand were also largely affected by widespread opium smuggling, a fact that prompted the Thai government to launch a violent campaign to limit the smuggling. During the offensive, there were allegations of widespread abuses of civilians as the army destroyed entire villages in search of opium smuggling networks. These violent episodes served as a recruiting opportunity for CPT who enjoyed a large following in the rural northeast of the country.
During the first half of the 1970s, there were several years of continuous campaigns against CPT, and the issue reached its peak when a student-led uprising was violently beaten down in Bangkok in 1976. The incident at the Thammasat University saw right-wing paramilitary forces together with state forces kill unarmed students at the university campus. The storming of the University campus left between 50 and several hundred dead and was conducted against a backdrop of fear of growing communist influence in Thailand. The massacre increased the support for the CPT, and by 1977, it is estimated that the CPT had 6000-8000 armed fighters, approximately one million sympathizers, and about half of the provinces of Thailand were declared communists infiltrated by the Thai authorities. Further in 1977, the Socialist party of Thailand joined ranks with the CPT and the two formed a united front, the Committee for Coordination of Patriotic and Democratic Forces.
CPT initially received external support mainly from China, but also from North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (Kampuchea)](/#country/811). However, following deteriorating relations between these neighboring communist governments in the region, CPT received less and less support towards the end of the 1970s. Thus, when North Vietnam invaded Cambodia (Kampuchea) in late 1978, CPT was hit hard, as the party relied on support from the communist governments and groups in the region. Ultimately, the conflict between North Vietnam and Cambodia (Kampuchea) forced CPT to choose sides. CPT condemned the Vietnamese aggression and maintained support from China, who supported Cambodia (Kampuchea). As Thai-Chinese relations improved, the Chinese government urged CPT to ease their revolutionary and violent stance towards the Thai government. In the years following the Thammasat University massacre, CPT experienced internal struggles, which eventually led to the disintegration of the party. In 1980, the Thai government issued an amnesty to defectors from CPT and by 1983, the conflict between the Thai government and the CPT was over. The CPT was no longer an organization violently opposing the Thai government, and was by the early nineties effectively dissolved.
