Communist Party of Burma
Encyclopedia
The Communist Party of Burma is the oldest existing political party in Burma. The party is unrecognised by the Burmese authorities, rendering it illegal; so it operates in a clandestine manner, often associating with insurgent armies along the border of People's Republic of China. It is often referred to as the Burma Communist Party (BCP) by both the Burmese government and the foreign media.
On 15 August 1939 at a secret meeting attended by seven men in a small room in Barr Street, Rangoon
, the Communist Party of Burma was founded. They were:
Its leaders in its long history of nearly 70 years were:
*Thakin is Burmese
for master – members of the nationalist Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association) put Thakin in front of their names proclaiming that they were the true masters of Burma and not the British.
. Between 1942 and 1945, the party prepared for and organised resistance against emerging fascism, particularly Japanese occupation of Burma
.
While in Insein prison in July 1941, Thakins Soe and Than Tun had co-authored the Insein Manifesto which declared fascism as the major enemy in the coming war and called for temporary cooperation with the British and the establishment of a broad coalition alliance that should include the Soviet Union
. The struggle for national liberation against imperialism
woud be resumed after the defeat of fascism. It followed the Popular Front
line advanced by the Bulgaria
n communist leader Georgi Dimitrov
at the Seventh Comintern
Congress in 1935. This was against the prevailing opinion of the Dobama movement including Thakin Aung San who had secretly left Burma with a group of young men, who later became known as the Thirty Comrades
, in order to receive military training from the Japanese
and founded the Burma Independence Army (BIA), later renamed the Burma Defence Army (BDA) and subsequently the Burma National Army
(BNA).
A puppet administration was set up during the occupation by the Japanese on 1 August 1943. Soe had gone underground in the Irrawaddy Delta
to organize armed resistance soon after the invasion, and Than Tun as Minister of Land and Agriculture was able to pass on intelligence to Soe. Other communist leaders Thakins Thein Pe and Tin Shwe made contact in July 1942 with the exiled colonial government in Simla
, India. In January 1944 at a secret meeting near Dedaye in the Delta, the CPB successfully held its First Congress chaired by Soe.
The Communists were in the forefront of armed resistance which subsequently became a national uprising on 27 March 1945 led by the BNA under the command of General Aung San
. The communist commander Bohmu Ba Htoo of the northwest command based in Mandalay
started the rebellion three weeks earlier on 8 March. The CPB together with the BNA and the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP, later renamed the Socialist Party), had formed the Anti-Fascist Organisation
(AFO) at a meeting in Pegu in August 1944; it was transformed into the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League
(AFPFL) a year later after the defeat of Japan and the return of the British colonial administration in order to continue the fight for freedom. The party that had started with a small group of men now became a major legal political party from 1945 until 1948 when Burma gained independence from Britain.
, leader of the American Communist Party, who proposed that armed struggle would no longer be necessary, as world fascism and imperialism had been weakened, making constitutional methods a real option to achieve national liberation. Thein Pe, who had replaced Soe as secretary general, was the leader responsible for the policy paper on strategy entitled Toward Better Mutual Understanding and Greater Cooperation written in India and adopted at the party's Second Congress at Bagaya Road, Rangoon in July 1945. Soe broke away from the CPB to form a splinter group called the Red Flag Communist Party. The majority remained with Thakins Than Tun and Thein Pe and continued to cooperate with the AFPFL; the main party became known as the White Flag communists although the title has never been officially accepted. During negotiations the British noticed that Than Tun was the thinker behind Aung San as he referred to his brother-in-law repeatedly for his opinion. Also dubbed 'Thein-Than Communists' in the popular press, in the end they failed to achieve 'Leftist Unity' with Aung San and the Socialists led by U Nu
and Kyaw Nyein within the AFPFL.
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Soe and Ba Tin had travelled to India in September 1945 to talk to the Communist Party of India
where Browderism was already under attack, and Soe came back convinced that armed struggle was the only way forward. Amidst widespread strikes starting with the Rangoon Police and mass rallies, the new British Governor Sir Hubert Rance
offered Aung San and the others seats in the Executive Council which after an initial refusal was taken up in September 1946. The CPB had by now abandoned the Browderist line, and a rift that had opened up between the party and Aung San with the socialists culminated in Than Tun being forced to resign as general secretary of the AFPFL in July of that year, a position he had held since its inception. The party was finally expelled from the AFPFL on 2 November after the communists had accused Aung San and the socialists of 'kneeling before imperialism', selling out by joining the Executive Council, and calling off the general strike.
that took place the following April, the party fielded 25 junior candidates but won just 7 seats. The assassination of Aung San and his cabinet members on 19 July stunned the CPB as much as the rest of the country, but the party was still anxious to build a united front with the AFPFL in order to drive the British out of Burma, convinced that the assassination was an imperialist plot to stop Aung San from achieving Leftist Unity.
Thakin Nu concluded negotiations that Aung San had started with the British premier Clement Attlee
in London, and the Nu-Attlee Treaty of October 1947 was condemned as a sham by the communists, the bone of contention in particular being the Let Ya-Freeman Defence Agreement, appended as an annex to the treaty. It provided for an initial period of three years for a British military training mission to remain in the country and a possible future military alliance with Britain. This was to the CPB proof of British intention to subvert Burma's sovereignty and Nu's capitulation.
meeting in Poland
, on 22 September 1947, the Soviet delegate Andrei Zhdanov
in his speech had divided the world into two camps: the anti-democratic imperialist camp led by the US, and the democratic anti-imperialist camp led by the Soviet Union
. He warned that, though greatly weakened by the war, the imperialist powers were now trying to regain their former colonies, either by handing over power to 'collaborationist national bourgeois' as in India
and Burma, or by trying to crush national liberation movements as in Indonesia
and Vietnam
.
On National Day
, 8 November 1947, Nu called for a new coalition of the Socialists, the CPB and the PVO (People's Volunteer Organisation) formed from the demobbed war veterans by Aung San as his own paramilitary force. When it failed Nu accused the communists of gathering arms for an insurrection. The impact of communist campaigning against the treaty left its mark in Burma's decision not to join the British Commonwealth
. The party's Burma-born Bengal
i theoretician Goshal's thesis in December titled On the Present Political Situation and Our Tasks set out a revolutionary strategy reviving the slogan 'final seizure of power' from the previous January, and called for a 'national rising to tear up the treaty of slavery', nationalisation of all British and foreign assets, the abolition of all forms of landlordism and debt, the dismantling of the state bureaucracy and its replacement with a people's government, and alliances and trade agreements with 'democratic China, fighting Vietnam
and Indonesia
' and other democratic countries resisting 'Anglo-America
n imperialist domination'. A twofold strategy would be followed: an escalating campaign of strikes by workers and government employees in Rangoon and other cities, and the establishment of liberated areas in the countryside to be defended by Red Guards consisting of PVOs trained in guerilla warfare.
February 1948 saw a wave of strikes in Rangoon by the All Burma Trade Union Congress
(ABTUC) backed by the CPB, and in March a 75,000 strong mass rally by the All Burma Peasants Organisation (ABPO) at Pyinmana
. Nu gave the order to arrest the communist leaders convinced that they were planning an uprising on Resistance Day, 27 March, only to find the CPB headquarters at Bagaya empty on the morning of 28 March; his quarry had flown to their stronghold Pyinmana to start an armed revolution. The CPB was not however officially outlawed until October 1953.
nationalists led by the veteran monk U Seinda as well as the Mujahid Rakhine Muslims. The PVO had split into White-band and Yellow-band factions; the majority White-band PVO led by Bo La Yaung, a member of the Thirty Comrades
, and Bo Po Kun, joined the insurrection in July. Nu's government deployed the Karen and Kachin Rifles to suppress the communist uprising, and took Pyay
, Thayetmyo
and Pyinmana
during the latter half of 1948. The Karen National Union
(KNU) rebelled at the end of January 1949 when the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Smith Dun, an ethnic Karen
was replaced by Gen. Ne Win
, a socialist commander and senior member of the Thirty Comrades after Aung San and Bo Let Ya. The Mon
joined the Karen. The Pa-O
in the Shan State
also rose up. Three regiments of the Burma Rifles
also went underground led by communist commanders Bo Zeya, Bo Yan Aung and Bo Yè Htut, all members of the Thirty Comrades, forming the Revolutionary Burma Army (RBA).
The CPB's appraisal of Burma as a 'semi-colonial semi-feudal' state led to the Maoist line of establishing guerilla bases among the peasants in the countryside as opposed to mobilising the urban proletariat
, although it continued to support above-ground leftist opposition parties such as the Burma Workers and Peasants Party (BWPP) led by trade union leaders Thakins Lwin and Chit Maung, and dubbed 'crypto-communists' or 'red socialists' by the Rangoon press. They tried unsuccessfully to bring the communists back into mainstream politics, and in 1956 formed an alliance called the National United Front
to contest the election on a 'peace ticket' winning 35% of the vote though only a small number of seats.
The politburo
's decision to fight 'for the very existence of our party' at a clandestine central committee meeting in April 1948 in Rangoon was confirmed the following month by the full plenum of the CC at Hpyu 120 miles north of the capital. The headquarters of the CPB remained on the move mostly in the forests and hills along the Sittang River
valley, Pyinmana
– Yamethin
area in central Burma, sometimes north into the Three M triangle (Mandalay
– Meiktila
– Myingyan
). Debt was abolished, and farming and trading co-operatives established in areas under their control. One year into the insurrection its forces were reorganised along Maoist lines into a main force, mobile guerilla forces and local people's militia, with the command shared between miitary and political commissars. In September 1950 the People's Army (PA) was formed by merging the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) with Bo Zeya's Revolutionary Burma Army (RBA). Its regular forces consisted of four main divisions, each with 1,000 men under arms.
The Karen National Union
(KNU) with its 'reactionary feudal leadership' was regarded as being used by the British to desatbilise the Union by both the AFPFL government and the communists, although Than Tun had supported the earlier Rakhine
nationalist rebellion against the British, the Shan struggle against the feudal autocracy, and the Karen right to self-determination. The civil war was thus waged from three sides: the AFPFL, the Communist-PVOs and the ethnic minority nationalists with the KNU threatening Rangoon itself in early 1949. Nu estimated government casualties alone at 3,424 dead including 1,352 army personnel in 1952.
, the revered veteran nationalist leader, formed an Internal Peace Committee which in 1958 was allowed by the government to speak on the CPB's behalf. The results of the 1956 election
, where the National United Front did very well on a peace ticket, had also given the AFPFL a jolt.
On the international front, US support of the Kuomintang
(KMT) forces, that had crossed over from Yunnan province into northeastern Burma after Mao's victory in China, had resulted in Burma's refusal to join the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). Zhou Enlai
visited Rangoon on his return from the Geneva Conference on Indo-China to meet Nu, and issued a joint communique reaffirming the 'five principles of peaceful co-existence' and the right of people 'to choose their own state system'; Nu repaid the visit the same year receiving the assurance that Chinese leaders had no contact with the CPB. Ne Win
also led a military delegation to Beijing in 1957, and met Chairman Mao Zedong
. A week-long visit in December 1955 by Nikolai Bulganin
and Nikita Khrushchev
appeared to endorse Burma as a model non-aligned, socialist Third World country developing at its own pace; Burma was a strong supporter of the 1955 Bandung Conference. Joseph Stalin
's death and the shift in Soviet
policy under Khrushchev contributed to the mood of national reconciliation.
Now U Nu turned the communist peace offensive to his advantage and came up with a very successful 'arms for democracy' offer. Tatmadaw offensives in early 1956, Operation Aung Thura (Valiant Victory) in Pakokku
area and Operation Aung Tayza (Glorious Victory) in Pathein
area, had been partly successful. The year 1958 saw mass surrenders of first the Rakhine
nationalists led by U Seinda, next the Pa-O
, Mon
, and Shan communists, but most importantly the PVO led by Bo Po Kun. The official figure was 5,500 armed insurgents that 'entered the light', of which about 800 were White Flag communists mainly in Sittwe
, northern Rakhine State
. The one crucial exception was the KNU.
facing opposition and protest only from the NUF and students. Over 400 communist sympathizers were arrested, and among the 153 deported to the Coco Islands in the Andaman Sea
was a leader of the NUF Aung Than, older brother of Aung San. The Botahtaung, Kyemon and Rangoon Daily newspapers were also closed down.
The military also intensified psychological warfare accusing the communists of being enemies of Buddhism
in a widely distributed booklet titled Dhammantaraya (Dhamma in Danger). The CPB countered with a pamphlet titled Rip off the Mask reaffirming its support for Buddhism and the individual's right to practise any religion. The Tatmadaw however achieved better success in its military offensives between 1958 and 1960.
after the town was captured by a joint CPB, RBA and PVO force. The Tripartite Alliance Pact was the next, signed by Than Tun, Soe and Bo Po Kun at Alaungdaw Kathapa village near Monywa
on 1 October 1952 amidst great rejoicing. Apart from the CPB-RBA merger of September 1950, the agreements mainly involved demarcation of territory and terms of cooperation.
The NDUF also included the fledgling New Mon State Party (NMSP) formed after the surrender of the Mon People's Front (MPF) and led by Nai Shwe Kyin
, the Chin National Vanguard Party (CNVP) formed in March 1956, and the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) formed in July 1957 and led by Saw Maw Reh. Both the NMSP and the KNPP had been founded with the help of the KNU. It was the most successful united front with the nationalities militarily, and lasted till 1976 when the KNU broke away from the NDUF to form the National Democratic Front (NDF). Political differences however remained unresolved as no compromise was possible between the CPB's support for regional autonomy
only as in China and the minorities' demand for self-determination
.
on 2 March, as the Shan Federal Movement
led by the first president of independent Burma Saopha
of Yawnghwe Saw Shwe Thaik was seen as a secessionist movement by army diehards. A major crackdown on the above-ground opposition followed, rounding up and imprisoning most of the remaining leaders of the AFPFL as well as the ethnic leaders, and as a foretaste of thngs to come a peaceful Rangoon University student protest was brutally suppressed by the military ending in the massacre of over a hundred students on 7 July 1962.
In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 5000.
in August. After just three meetings the talks were abruptly ended by the RC on 20 August and the Red Flag communists were flown back to Sittwe
.
Three CPB teams arrived in July and September by air from China led by Bo Zeya, Yebaw Aung Gyi, Thakins Pu and Ba Thein Tin. These 'Beijing returnees' were allowed to travel to the party’s jungle headquarters in the Bago Yoma near Paukkaung where the leadership, reunited after 15 years, held an historic meeting of the Central Committee. Talks began on 2 September after the CPB delegation headed by the general secretary Yebaw Htay and the People's Army's chief of staff Bo Zeya arrived on 28 August. A second team headed by Thakin Zin , politbureau member and secretary of the NDUF which agreed to negotiate as one team, arrived on 20 September. Meetings with the CPB and NDUF overshadowed those with other nationalities such as the Shan and Kachin delegations.
Expectations had been running high, and the People’s Peace Committee, set up by the NUF and supported by Thakin Kodaw Hmaing
and former brigadier Kyaw Zaw
, staged a Six-District Peace March in early November from Minhla to Rangoon. The marchers were cheered and applauded along the entire route by large crowds chanting anti-government slogans, and given food parcels collected by the Rangoon University Students Union (RUSU) and the All Burma Federation of Student Unions
(ABFSU). When they reached Rangoon at a mass rally of 200,000 in front of City Hall, speakers openly supported the NDUF’s demand to keep its weapons and territory. Although at first the CPB and NDUF had misinterpreted Ne Win’s peace offensive as a sign of weakness desperate for a solution, once they arrived in Rangoon they realised it was going to be a mainly cosmetic exercise. They therefore took the opportunity to re-establish contacts and meet family and friends.
, purging the party of ‘revisionists’, and as in China things went out of control, gaining notoriety as the line of ‘purge, dismiss and eliminate’, before he could finally pull the reins back. Great damage nonetheless had already been done to the CPB's image, particularly the killing of young university student leaders who had joined the CPB after the failed peace parley in 1963. The country had experienced this kind of treatment of their young only recently at the hands of General Ne Win
's army in the 7 July 1962 massacre.
From now on the CPB would no longer be the destination and refuge of later waves of students fleeing government crackdown and suppression of major protests and demonstrations; they would instead go to ethnic rebel areas, most tellingly in the wake of the failed national uprising in 1988
.
’s manifesto of the ‘’Burmese Way to Socialism
’’ soon after the coup and the founding of the Burma Socialist Programme Party
(BSPP) with the help of ex-Communists, all contributed to a certain part of the CPB leadership’s review of its armed struggle which had been the main difference between the party and the above-ground leftist opposition BWPP and NUF. Goshal, Yebaw Htay and Bo Yan Aung headed the faction that now questioned the relevance of the armed struggle, and Thakins Than Tun, Zin, Chit and Bo Zeya became the majority reinforced by the ‘Beijing returnees’ headed by Yebaw Aung Gyi, a former RUSU leader whose detailed analysis of the party’s history so far was adopted as the ‘1964 line’ at the meeting of the CC near Nattalin from 9 September to 14 October 1964.
At this historic meeting, which 11 out of 20 CC members were able to attend, they reached unanimous agreement to reaffirm Burma’s status as ‘semi-colonial’ after her ‘pseudo-independence’ and the primacy of the armed struggle against Ne Win’s ‘armed counter-revolution’. The party would establish a broad alliance of the nationalities and peasants in a united front, with the key task identified as party building.
The Soviet-China split saw the CPB squarely behind the Communist Party of China
(CCP), rejecting the 1955 ‘revisionist’ line. On the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the party declared that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) was now supporting Ne Win’s ‘pseudo-socialism’.
Burma’s insurgent armies, both ethnic and communist, had been students of Mao’s Protracted War whatever their ideology. Now the CPB began to identify so closely with the CCP that it became China’s most important ally among the communist parties in the region, more so after China’s cultural revolution
spilled over its borders leading to violent anti-Chinese riots in Burma with huge loss of life and property in Rangoon and the rest of the country.
Upholding the banner of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought
' (MLMTT), the CPB embarked on building up rural bases called Red Power areas with ‘hard core’ activists in order to encircle the cities from the countryside for the ‘final seizure of power’ once again the strategic goal. A central school for political training in MLM was established and the first course began on 25 March 1965.
Growing dissension in the party however prompted Thakins Than Tun , Chit and the Beijing returnees to meet on 16 August 1966 in order to decide on a strategy to counter this. They borrowed directly from China in their decision to use Red Guard
youth teams and chose university and high school students at the party headquarters.
’ and ‘Liu Shaochi’ respectively. Than Tun and the remaining politbureau passed a resolution on 15 December to adopt the ‘intra-party revolutionary line’ and ordered party units around the country to carry out their own purges. Bo Yan Aung, who accompanied Aung San
to Amoy
on the historic journey in search of military training abroad as the first of the Thirty Comrades
, was the next victim on 26 December.
Government troops took advantage of the chaos and confusion among the communists, and on 16 April 1968, in a battle on the Pyay
-Tharrawaddy border Bo Zeya, the People’s Army’s chief of staff and another great hero of Burma’s struggle for independence and member of the Thirty Comrades, was killed in action. Dr Nath, the other Bengali
founder-member of the CPB besides Goshal, was the next to fall later the same year near Hpyu in the Bago Yoma.
In August 1968 Bo Tun Nyein who led the Red Guards in the executions of Goshal, Htay and Yan Aung, was himself charged with ‘trying to set up a rival party headquarters’ and executed. Former RUSU student leaders such as Aung Thein Naing, nephew of Bo Yan Aung, and Soe Win, son of Ludu U Hla
and Daw Amar
met the same fate the next month.
, albeit now a fallen idol, died at the age of 57. He was no mere ideologue but a man of unequalled organisational skills, and the only politician who nearly matched his brother-in-law Aung San
in reputation and status and who left his mark on every stage of Burma's struggle for national liberation.
on New Year Day 1968, captured Mong Ko, and established the first war zone ‘303’ of the CPB North-East Command (NEC). This was quickly followed by ‘404’ in Kokang substate
winning over the local warlord Pheung Kya-shin
. Here a rival warlord Lo Hsing Han
and his Ka Kwe Yay (KKY, lit. defence) force was built up by the Tatmadaw, and another force led by a member of the Saopha
’s family Jimmy Yang, a former MP, was supported by the insurgent Shan State Army
(SSA) and later by U Nu
who founded the Parliamentary Democracy Party (PDP) and launched his own armed rebellion after going into exile in Thailand
in 1969, three years after his release from prison.
To the north, war zone ‘202’ was established along the River Shweli, but war zone ‘101’ had to be added with difficulty the following April, and only after the defection of Ting Ying and Zalum from the Kachin Independence Organisation
(KIO). The advance farther south along the border was again quickly accomplished capturing Kyukok on 28 March 1970, the anniversary of the CPB insurrection, followed by Mong Mau in northern Wa
hills on 1 May. The fierce battles for Kutkai
and Kunlong
towards the end of the year however ended in retreat. On the anniversary of the uprising in March 1971, the Voice of the People of Burma (VOPB) started its transmission from the Chinese side of the border moving into Burma only in the late 1970s.
By 1973 the NEC had overrun almost the entire Wa substate establishing a new CPB headquarters at the border village of Panghsang
. A vast area next to Laos
became known as the ‘815’ military region named after the party’s founding anniversary 15 August. A 1,000 strong SSA East led by Khun Myint was also won over and merged to form the ‘768’ brigade in the Kengtung area. The plan to build up the '108' region north of Taunggyi
however was thwarted after the Shan state commander Bo Soe Maung, a Burma Rifle veteran, and CC member Thakin Tin Tun, a Dobama veteran, were killed in action in 1969–70 by an all out Tatmadaw offensive.
campaign, never before tried in mainland Burma, called the Hpyat lay hpyat (Four Cuts), a counter-insurgency
programme modelled on the ‘new village’ tactics developed by the British during the Malayan Emergency
and later adopted by the US in Vietnam as the ‘strategic hamlet’ now translated into byuha kyay-ywa, albeit ignoring the battle for 'hearts and minds'. It sought to cut the links of food, funds, information and recruits between the insurgents and their families and the local populace. The rural communities now faced the stark choice of flee, fight or join the Tatmadaw.
Black, brown and white areas were mapped out as insurgent-controlled, contested and government-controlled areas respectively. Entire districts became free-fire zones where villagers spotted outside designated areas could be shot without warning. They were forcibly relocated and also organised into a 'people's militia
' with an army garrison at the centre shielded by the village. A network of watchtowers was built covering crucial points in the entire area, and troops patrolled the area flushing out the insurgents. It proved devastatingly effective, and soon the CPB units found themselves pulling out of one area to the next with no prospect of regaining their old haunts. The Tatmadaw had created new special strike forces called Light Infantry Divisions (LID), starting with the 77th LID in 1966, then the 88th and 99th in 1967–68, all under not regional but central command.
The New Year Day of 1968 also saw the first stage of the 'Four Cuts' offensive deploying the 88th LID. Within eight years the CPB units in the Delta and Bago Yoma were decimated , the mountains virtually cleared of human habitation. The last major government military offensive code-named Operation Aung Soe Moe (Conquer and Rule) finally succeeded in wiping out the CPB in central Burma. On 15 March 1975 Thakins Zin and Chit were killed in action when finally cornered by a unit of the 77th LID they defied the demand for surrender; they were both in their mid-sixties. Zin, a wartime organiser and former leader of the All Burma Peasants organisation (ABPO), had succeeded Than Tun as chairman, and Chit, a schoolteacher who had co-founded the Socialist Party and sent several future members of the Thirty Comrades to Japan before joining the CPB and former leader of the All Burma Trade Union Congress (ABTUC), was the general secretary.
-trained Khin Maung Gyi from the next generation were appointed his deputies. Ba Thein Tin signalled a change in policy in his warning against 'left dogmatism' as much as against revisionism. The party must still fight a peasant war in a semi-colonial country but forge a worker-peasant alliance and united front including the 'urban bourgeois, national capitalists, progressive democrats and all the nationalities'.
The CPB was handed a rare propaganda coup when in July 1976, former Brig. Kyaw Zaw
, a member of the Thirty Comrades and hero of Tatmadaw’s campaigns against the KNU and the KMT in the 1950s, defected with his family to Panghsang. He was appointed to the Central Military Commission, and immediately made a damaging broadcast on Ne Win on the VOPB. For the first time in history he revealed that Aung San and others had once seriously considered removing Ne Win from the military on account of his ‘fascist’ tendencies under the Japanese. He addressed the government troops directly, “Your life is the life of an assassin and a murderer serving the power-mad and evil king Ne Win”.
. Ba Thein Tin drew up a plan in October 1975 called the ‘7510 plan’ to strike west and link up with the guerrilla bases on the western edge of the Shan plateau. Its first major offensive to the west of the Salween River
into the Tangyang area in June had been unsuccessful after heavy fighting, even though it had inflicted heavy losses on the 99th LID earlier including its deputy-commander.
Late 1975 also saw the 815 military region launch an offensive against the 88th LID in the Mong Yawng area in order to consolidate control of the mountainous region along the Laotian border. The next year the Shan 768 brigade formed from the former SSA East began building up its own adjoining base area. Another force tried to break through from the Shweli River towards Shwebo
. The 683 brigade also struck west to link up with the former 108 region to the north of Mandalay
.
and Bamar
. He and his decimated troops were eventually caught up and forced to surrender in July 1980 after the 66th LID had cleared the mountains of all human habitation.
A Tatmadaw counter-offensive code-named Operation King Conqueror was launched in November 1979 east of the Salween succeeding in recapturing the mountains overlooking Panghsang just 30 km away. In 1980 the CPB countered with two major operations briefly overrunning Muse
and later Mong Yawng 250 miles farther south. After heavy losses on both sides they had fought each other to a standstill. The ten year plan of Chinese aid to the CPB was finally coming to an end, and the supply lines stretching west of the Salween proved too long to sustain and defend, even though the CPB had by now shown its mettle in fighting set-piece battles of regular warfare as well against the Tatmadaw.
and Khun Sa
and set up by the Tatmadaw, had engaged in opium trafficking often with the Tatmadaw officers and mainly with the KMT
on the Thai
border as business partners. Although the CPB took strong measures to eradicate poppy
cultivation with crop-substitution in the early 1970s, it began to relax these restrictions later on and collected 20% of the crop as well as tax on the trade after Chinese aid eventually dried up. Its hardline Maoist stance during the Cultural Revolution
in China had hardly endeared itself to the new premier Deng Xiaoping
. The strategy of winning over local warlord
s and absorbing their forces into the PA had also contributed to this politically embarrassing contradiction to its Maoist principles. In 1985 at the CPB’s Third Congress, regulations against the opium trade were introduced prohibiting party members from involvement in narcotics including a death penalty for large-scale heroin traffickers. The leadership would claim later that it was these measures which triggered the internal rebellions that led to the collapse of the party in 1989.
–led political parties in history including the AFPFL, Ne Win’s BSPP and Nu's PDP, it too was open to criticism and allegations of chauvinism
. The party had characterised its armed struggle as a 'national democratic revolution' against feudal oppression , imperialism, and 'military bureaucratic capitalism' before achieving the goal of a ‘people’s democracy’. It believed that the correct settlement of the nationalities question was the realisation of the worker-peasant alliance under the leadership of the working class namely the CPB.
Despite periodic military alliances between the party and the ethnic insurgent armies with considerable mutual benefit while they lasted, the CPB's influence proved divisive to the nationalist groups. Skaw Ler Taw, a leader of the Karen National Union
(KNU), stated, “ The CPB had a standing order to split nationalist parties. Mao said that in any organisation there are three groups: the progressives, the neutrals or moderates, and the conservatives. Like Mao, the CPB’s policy was to join with the progressives, win over the neutrals and expel the die-hards”.
The nationalist groups had sent missions to China for assistance since 1968, and they usually came under intense pressure to join the communist struggle. Besides aid was only forthcoming through the CPB which would then provide training as well as arms but would also often succeed in ideological indoctrination. Consequently it has tended to split the movements into pro-CPB and anti-communist factions to this day.
The party’s general programme was drawn up in the light of ‘the experiences of the last 30 years of the armed struggle’.
in protest against Soviet and Vietnamese manipulation at the September 1979 Havana
Conference, the Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua paid a visit to Rangoon. Ne Win announced an amnesty in 1980 which saw the return of U Nu
and others from Thailand. The CPB responded with an attack on Mong Yawng, but proposed talks in September after letting the amnesty expire. The first meeting took place in Beijing in October between the teams led by Ba Thein Tin and Ne Win who paid a surprise visit to China leaving the Kachin delegation in the middle of the talks in Rangoon. At the second meeting headed by Thakin Pe Tint for the CPB and Maj. Gen. Aye Ko for the BSPP the following May in Lashio
, three new conditions were put on the table by Aye Ko:
The CPB was told that according to Article 11 of the 1974 Constitution which had established Burma as a one-party state there was no place for another political party. Ne Win ended the peace talks on 14 May and let the ceasefire deadline of 31 May with the KIO pass without replying to the Kachin position. There had been no ceasefire agreement with the CPB.
The VOPB began to broadcast appeals for ending the civil war, developing democracy and building national unity in a new multi-party system
. The CPB still commanded 15,000 troops in the north-east, and the Tatmadaw, after resuming the Operation King Conqueror belatedly in 1982 and having suffered losses amounting to several hundred in the Kengtung-Tangyang area from CPB counter-attacks, finally retreated. Both sides now faced another challenge in the rising strength of the National Democratic Front (NDF) formed in 1976, pointedly excluding the Bamar
, by the ethnic insurgencies uniting the Karen, Mon, Kachin, Shan,Pa-O, Karenni, Kayan, Wa and Lahu, particularly with the return of the KIO in 1983 after its separate peace talks with the BSPP failed. This finally led to the CPB reaching an agreement with the NDF in 1986.
in the world in 1987 and simmering discontent over the years compounded by yet another round of ‘demonetization’ culminated in a great outburst of angry protests and demonstrations countrywide which led to a national uprising on 8 August 1988. It was brutally crushed by the Tatmadaw, killing thousands of civilians and this time in the cities alleging communist infiltration.
Kyin Maung, then politbureau member in charge of the CPB underground Task Force 4828 (named after the 28 March 1948 insurrection), was forthright in admitting the presence of cadres in the cities including Thet Khaing, son-in-law of Kyaw Zaw
, but asserted that the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) had greatly exaggerated the party’s 'leading role' in the uprising. The party had begun advocating a multi-party democracy system after 1981, and it was not until 28 March 1988, the anniversary of the insurrection, that it called for a provisional government composed of various opposition parties, forces and personages. The students’ call for an interim government in order to end one-party rule and to hold multi-party elections never materialised as U Nu
and Aung San Suu Kyi
could not agree to work together, and this failure to achieve a united opposition sealed the fate of the uprising.
Former communists, both CPB and Red Flag, and leftwing sympathizers old and new were active organisers and supporters of the democracy movement and strike committees in the cities. Kyin Maung stated,”We had never said that we initiated the upheavals. Nor did we say that our cadres comprised the leading core. On the contrary, we firmly believe that the upheavals had so much impact only because all the forces for democracy took part. Marxism holds that it is the people who make history”. Neither the CPB nor the NDF took advantage of the deep crisis that the government found itself in, the former evidently unprepared for an urban uprising as opposed to a peasant war, and the ethnic armies apparently regarding it as an internal Burman
issue.
Actual party membership is estimated to be no more than around 3,000 at any one time, even though in its heyday the CPB could muster troops in tens of thousands and around a million-strong peasant organisation. The party continues to recruit according to the 'hard to join, easy to quit' principle.http://www.cpburma.org/ Some analysts still consider the CPB a force to be reckoned with in future upheavals and potentially a major challenge to the military regime.
On 15 August 1939 at a secret meeting attended by seven men in a small room in Barr Street, Rangoon
Yangon
Yangon is a former capital of Burma and the capital of Yangon Region . Although the military government has officially relocated the capital to Naypyidaw since March 2006, Yangon, with a population of over four million, continues to be the country's largest city and the most important commercial...
, the Communist Party of Burma was founded. They were:
- Thakin*Aung SanAung SanBogyoke Aung San ; 13 February 1915 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese revolutionary, nationalist, and founder of the modern Burmese army, the Tatmadaw....
- Thakin Ba Hein
- Yèbaw Ba Tin aka H. N. GoshalH. N. GoshalH. N. Goshal was a communist politician and trade union leader in Burma, of Bengali origin. Goshal was one of the foremost leaders of the Communist Party of Burma and the most prominent theoretician of the party for several years...
(**) - Thakin Soe
- Thakin Hla Pe (later Bo Let Ya)
- Yèbaw Tun Maung aka Dr Nath and
- Thakin Bo
Its leaders in its long history of nearly 70 years were:
-
- Thakin Aung San – secretary general
- Thakin Soe – secretary general
- Thakin Thein Pe (later writer and journalist Thein Pe Myint) – secretary general
- Thakin Than TunThakin Than TunThakin Than Tun born in Kanyutkwin, Myanmar, was a Burmese politician and leader of the Communist Party of Burma from 1945 until his death at age 57.-Struggle for freedom:...
– chairman - Thakin Zin – chairman
- Thakin Ba Thein Tin – chairman
- Yèbaw Kyin Maung – current secretary general http://www.cpburma.org/
*Thakin is Burmese
Burmese language
The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
for master – members of the nationalist Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association) put Thakin in front of their names proclaiming that they were the true masters of Burma and not the British.
Fight for freedom
The CPB struggled for independence from Great Britain and against imperialismImperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
. Between 1942 and 1945, the party prepared for and organised resistance against emerging fascism, particularly Japanese occupation of Burma
Japanese occupation of Burma
The Japanese occupation of Burma refers to the period between 1942 and 1945 during World War II, when Burma was a part of the Empire of Japan. The Japanese had assisted formation of the Burma Independence Army, and trained the Thirty Comrades, who were the founders of the modern Armed Forces...
.
While in Insein prison in July 1941, Thakins Soe and Than Tun had co-authored the Insein Manifesto which declared fascism as the major enemy in the coming war and called for temporary cooperation with the British and the establishment of a broad coalition alliance that should include the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The struggle for national liberation against imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
woud be resumed after the defeat of fascism. It followed the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
line advanced by the Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n communist leader Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
at the Seventh Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
Congress in 1935. This was against the prevailing opinion of the Dobama movement including Thakin Aung San who had secretly left Burma with a group of young men, who later became known as the Thirty Comrades
Thirty Comrades
The Thirty Comrades constituted the embryo of the modern Burmese army called the Burma Independence Army which was formed to fight for independence from Britain...
, in order to receive military training from the Japanese
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
and founded the Burma Independence Army (BIA), later renamed the Burma Defence Army (BDA) and subsequently the Burma National Army
Burma National Army
The Burma National Army served as the armed forces of the Burmese government created by the Japanese during World War II and fought in the Burma Campaign...
(BNA).
A puppet administration was set up during the occupation by the Japanese on 1 August 1943. Soe had gone underground in the Irrawaddy Delta
Irrawaddy Delta
The Irrawaddy Delta or Ayeyarwady Delta lies in the Ayeyarwady Region , the lowest expanse of land in Burma that fans out from the limit of tidal influence at Myan Aung to the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, 290 km to the south at the mouth of the Ayeyarwady River...
to organize armed resistance soon after the invasion, and Than Tun as Minister of Land and Agriculture was able to pass on intelligence to Soe. Other communist leaders Thakins Thein Pe and Tin Shwe made contact in July 1942 with the exiled colonial government in Simla
Shimla
Shimla , formerly known as Simla, is the capital city of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared the summer capital of the British Raj in India. A popular tourist destination, Shimla is often referred to as the "Queen of Hills," a term coined by the British...
, India. In January 1944 at a secret meeting near Dedaye in the Delta, the CPB successfully held its First Congress chaired by Soe.
The Communists were in the forefront of armed resistance which subsequently became a national uprising on 27 March 1945 led by the BNA under the command of General Aung San
Aung San
Bogyoke Aung San ; 13 February 1915 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese revolutionary, nationalist, and founder of the modern Burmese army, the Tatmadaw....
. The communist commander Bohmu Ba Htoo of the northwest command based in Mandalay
Mandalay
Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma. Located north of Yangon on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, the city has a population of one million, and is the capital of Mandalay Region ....
started the rebellion three weeks earlier on 8 March. The CPB together with the BNA and the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP, later renamed the Socialist Party), had formed the Anti-Fascist Organisation
Anti-Fascist Organisation
The Anti-Fascist Organisation was a Burmese resistance movement against the Japanese Occupation during the Second World War. It was the forerunner of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League so renamed at the end of the war on 19 August 1945 after the defeat of Japan and the return of the British...
(AFO) at a meeting in Pegu in August 1944; it was transformed into the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League
Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League
The Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League , or hpa hsa pa la by its Burmese acronym, was the main political party in Burma from 1945 until 1962...
(AFPFL) a year later after the defeat of Japan and the return of the British colonial administration in order to continue the fight for freedom. The party that had started with a small group of men now became a major legal political party from 1945 until 1948 when Burma gained independence from Britain.
Browderism and Red Flag – White Flag split
In February 1946 Thakin Soe denounced the leadership, accusing them of Browderism, the form of revisionism espoused by Earl BrowderEarl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
, leader of the American Communist Party, who proposed that armed struggle would no longer be necessary, as world fascism and imperialism had been weakened, making constitutional methods a real option to achieve national liberation. Thein Pe, who had replaced Soe as secretary general, was the leader responsible for the policy paper on strategy entitled Toward Better Mutual Understanding and Greater Cooperation written in India and adopted at the party's Second Congress at Bagaya Road, Rangoon in July 1945. Soe broke away from the CPB to form a splinter group called the Red Flag Communist Party. The majority remained with Thakins Than Tun and Thein Pe and continued to cooperate with the AFPFL; the main party became known as the White Flag communists although the title has never been officially accepted. During negotiations the British noticed that Than Tun was the thinker behind Aung San as he referred to his brother-in-law repeatedly for his opinion. Also dubbed 'Thein-Than Communists' in the popular press, in the end they failed to achieve 'Leftist Unity' with Aung San and the Socialists led by U Nu
U Nu
For other people with the Burmese name Nu, see Nu .U Nu was a leading Burmese nationalist and political figure of the 20th century...
and Kyaw Nyein within the AFPFL.
Armed revolution
Communist Party of India
The Communist Party of India is a national political party in India. In the Indian communist movement, there are different views on exactly when the Indian communist party was founded. The date maintained as the foundation day by CPI is 26 December 1925...
where Browderism was already under attack, and Soe came back convinced that armed struggle was the only way forward. Amidst widespread strikes starting with the Rangoon Police and mass rallies, the new British Governor Sir Hubert Rance
Hubert Rance
Major General Sir Hubert Elvin Rance GCMG GBE CB was the last British Governor of Burma between 1946 and 1948, while the country moved towards independence. Later he became Governor of Trinidad and Tobago.-Career to 1945:...
offered Aung San and the others seats in the Executive Council which after an initial refusal was taken up in September 1946. The CPB had by now abandoned the Browderist line, and a rift that had opened up between the party and Aung San with the socialists culminated in Than Tun being forced to resign as general secretary of the AFPFL in July of that year, a position he had held since its inception. The party was finally expelled from the AFPFL on 2 November after the communists had accused Aung San and the socialists of 'kneeling before imperialism', selling out by joining the Executive Council, and calling off the general strike.
Elections and "sham independence"
In February 1947 Ba Thein Tin and communist student leader Aung Gyi attended the British Empire Conference of Communist Parties in London, the first time the CPB took part in an international communist forum. After denouncing the elections to the Constituent AssemblyBurmese general election, 1947
General elections were held in Burma on 9 April 1947 to form the basis of a constituent assembly which would design a constitution once independence from the United Kingdom had been achieved. They were the first elections in Burma since its separation from India under the British Raj...
that took place the following April, the party fielded 25 junior candidates but won just 7 seats. The assassination of Aung San and his cabinet members on 19 July stunned the CPB as much as the rest of the country, but the party was still anxious to build a united front with the AFPFL in order to drive the British out of Burma, convinced that the assassination was an imperialist plot to stop Aung San from achieving Leftist Unity.
Thakin Nu concluded negotiations that Aung San had started with the British premier Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
in London, and the Nu-Attlee Treaty of October 1947 was condemned as a sham by the communists, the bone of contention in particular being the Let Ya-Freeman Defence Agreement, appended as an annex to the treaty. It provided for an initial period of three years for a British military training mission to remain in the country and a possible future military alliance with Britain. This was to the CPB proof of British intention to subvert Burma's sovereignty and Nu's capitulation.
Crossroads to conflict
At the first CominformCominform
Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
meeting in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, on 22 September 1947, the Soviet delegate Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician.-Life:Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934...
in his speech had divided the world into two camps: the anti-democratic imperialist camp led by the US, and the democratic anti-imperialist camp led by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. He warned that, though greatly weakened by the war, the imperialist powers were now trying to regain their former colonies, either by handing over power to 'collaborationist national bourgeois' as in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Burma, or by trying to crush national liberation movements as in Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
.
On National Day
National Day
The National Day is a designated date on which celebrations mark the nationhood of a nation or non-sovereign country. This nationhood can be symbolized by the date of independence, of becoming republic or a significant date for a patron saint or a ruler . Often the day is not called "National Day"...
, 8 November 1947, Nu called for a new coalition of the Socialists, the CPB and the PVO (People's Volunteer Organisation) formed from the demobbed war veterans by Aung San as his own paramilitary force. When it failed Nu accused the communists of gathering arms for an insurrection. The impact of communist campaigning against the treaty left its mark in Burma's decision not to join the British Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
. The party's Burma-born Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
i theoretician Goshal's thesis in December titled On the Present Political Situation and Our Tasks set out a revolutionary strategy reviving the slogan 'final seizure of power' from the previous January, and called for a 'national rising to tear up the treaty of slavery', nationalisation of all British and foreign assets, the abolition of all forms of landlordism and debt, the dismantling of the state bureaucracy and its replacement with a people's government, and alliances and trade agreements with 'democratic China, fighting Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
and Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
' and other democratic countries resisting 'Anglo-America
Anglo-America
Anglo-America is a region in the Americas in which English is a main language, or one which has significant British historical, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural links...
n imperialist domination'. A twofold strategy would be followed: an escalating campaign of strikes by workers and government employees in Rangoon and other cities, and the establishment of liberated areas in the countryside to be defended by Red Guards consisting of PVOs trained in guerilla warfare.
February 1948 saw a wave of strikes in Rangoon by the All Burma Trade Union Congress
All Burma Trade Union Congress
The All Burma Trade Union Congress was a central trade union organisation in Burma. ABTUC was founded on January 30, 1940. ABTUC had its origins in the All Burma Labour Conference, which had been assembled by the Thakins in July 1939...
(ABTUC) backed by the CPB, and in March a 75,000 strong mass rally by the All Burma Peasants Organisation (ABPO) at Pyinmana
Pyinmana
Pyinmana ) is a logging town and sugarcane refinery center in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. The administrative capital of Myanmar was officially moved to a militarized greenfield site two miles west of Pyinmana on November 6, 2005. Pyinmana is approximately north of Yangon...
. Nu gave the order to arrest the communist leaders convinced that they were planning an uprising on Resistance Day, 27 March, only to find the CPB headquarters at Bagaya empty on the morning of 28 March; his quarry had flown to their stronghold Pyinmana to start an armed revolution. The CPB was not however officially outlawed until October 1953.
Civil war
Within eight months of independence Burma plunged into an all out civil war. Soe's Red Flag Communists had already started a rebellion, so had the RakhineRakhine people
The Rakhine , is a nationality in Myanmar forming the majority along the coastal region of present day Rakhine State or Arakan State. They possibly constitute 5.53% or more of Myanmar's total population but no accurate census figures exist. Rakhine people also live in the southeastern parts of...
nationalists led by the veteran monk U Seinda as well as the Mujahid Rakhine Muslims. The PVO had split into White-band and Yellow-band factions; the majority White-band PVO led by Bo La Yaung, a member of the Thirty Comrades
Thirty Comrades
The Thirty Comrades constituted the embryo of the modern Burmese army called the Burma Independence Army which was formed to fight for independence from Britain...
, and Bo Po Kun, joined the insurrection in July. Nu's government deployed the Karen and Kachin Rifles to suppress the communist uprising, and took Pyay
Pyay
Pyay is a town in the Bago Division in Burma. It has an estimated population of 123,800 . Pyay is positioned on the Ayeyarwady River and is northwest of Yangon....
, Thayetmyo
Thayetmyo
Thayet or Thayetmyo is a city in Thayet District of Magway Region in central Burma . It is a port on the right bank of the Irrawaddy River, across and just south of Allanmyo, between Pyay and Magway. Thayet is the administrative seat of both Thayet District and Thayet Township...
and Pyinmana
Pyinmana
Pyinmana ) is a logging town and sugarcane refinery center in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. The administrative capital of Myanmar was officially moved to a militarized greenfield site two miles west of Pyinmana on November 6, 2005. Pyinmana is approximately north of Yangon...
during the latter half of 1948. The Karen National Union
Karen National Union
The Karen National Union is a political organisation with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army that represents the Karen people of Burma. It operates in Eastern Burma, and has underground networks in other areas of Burma where Karen people live. In Karen, this Karen area is called...
(KNU) rebelled at the end of January 1949 when the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Smith Dun, an ethnic Karen
Karen people
The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...
was replaced by Gen. Ne Win
Ne Win
Ne Win was Burmese a politician and military commander. He was Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974 and also head of state from 1962 to 1981...
, a socialist commander and senior member of the Thirty Comrades after Aung San and Bo Let Ya. The Mon
Mon people
The Mon are an ethnic group from Burma , living mostly in Mon State, Bago Division, the Irrawaddy Delta, and along the southern Thai–Burmese border. One of the earliest peoples to reside in Southeast Asia, the Mon were responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Burma and Thailand...
joined the Karen. The Pa-O
Pa-O
The Pa-Oh form an ethnic group in Burma, comprising approximately 600,000. The Pa-Oh form the second largest ethnic group in Shan State, and are classified as part of the "Shan National Race" by the government, although they are believed to be of Tibeto-Burman stock, and are ethnolinguistically...
in the Shan State
Shan State
Shan State is a state of Burma . Shan State borders China to the north, Laos to the east, and Thailand to the south, and five administrative divisions of Burma in the west. Largest of the 14 administrative divisions by land area, Shan State covers 155,800 km², almost a quarter of the total...
also rose up. Three regiments of the Burma Rifles
Burma Rifles
The Burma Rifles were a regiment of the British Indian Army created in 1917. The regiment re-used the name of an unrelated earlier unit, the 10th Regiment Madras Infantry, which evolved into the 10th Princess Mary's Own Gurkha Rifles....
also went underground led by communist commanders Bo Zeya, Bo Yan Aung and Bo Yè Htut, all members of the Thirty Comrades, forming the Revolutionary Burma Army (RBA).
The CPB's appraisal of Burma as a 'semi-colonial semi-feudal' state led to the Maoist line of establishing guerilla bases among the peasants in the countryside as opposed to mobilising the urban proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
, although it continued to support above-ground leftist opposition parties such as the Burma Workers and Peasants Party (BWPP) led by trade union leaders Thakins Lwin and Chit Maung, and dubbed 'crypto-communists' or 'red socialists' by the Rangoon press. They tried unsuccessfully to bring the communists back into mainstream politics, and in 1956 formed an alliance called the National United Front
National United Front
The National United Front was a political coalition in Burma, formed ahead of the April 1956 general election. NUF consisted of the Burma Workers and Peasants Party, the Justice Party led by Dr. E Maung, the People's Unity Party led by Thein Pe Myint, the People's Peace Front and other sectors. NUF...
to contest the election on a 'peace ticket' winning 35% of the vote though only a small number of seats.
The politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
's decision to fight 'for the very existence of our party' at a clandestine central committee meeting in April 1948 in Rangoon was confirmed the following month by the full plenum of the CC at Hpyu 120 miles north of the capital. The headquarters of the CPB remained on the move mostly in the forests and hills along the Sittang River
Sittang River
The Sittaung is a river in south central Myanmar in Bago Division. The Pegu Range separates its basin from that of the Irrawaddy. The river originates at the edge of the Shan Plateau southeast of Mandalay, and flows southward to the Gulf of Martaban...
valley, Pyinmana
Pyinmana
Pyinmana ) is a logging town and sugarcane refinery center in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. The administrative capital of Myanmar was officially moved to a militarized greenfield site two miles west of Pyinmana on November 6, 2005. Pyinmana is approximately north of Yangon...
– Yamethin
Yamethin
Yamethin is a town in central Burma in Yamethin District, Mandalay Region. Yamethin provides a market and processing for local agriculture production of rice and beans, as well having a small textile industry, and serving as a railroad shipping point on the Rangoon – Mandalay...
area in central Burma, sometimes north into the Three M triangle (Mandalay
Mandalay
Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma. Located north of Yangon on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, the city has a population of one million, and is the capital of Mandalay Region ....
– Meiktila
Meiktila
Meiktila is a city in central Myanmar, located on the banks of Lake Meiktila in Mandalay Division, at the junctions of the Bagan-Taunggyi, Yangon-Mandalay and Meiktila-Myingyan highways. Because of its strategic position, Meiktila is home to Myanmar Air Force's central command and Meiktila Air...
– Myingyan
Myingyan
Myingyan is a city and district in the Mandalay Division of central Myanmar, previously, it was a district in the Meiktila Division of Upper Burma. It is currently the capital of Myingyan Township and lies along the National Highway 2. , the city had a population of 123,700 and the district had...
). Debt was abolished, and farming and trading co-operatives established in areas under their control. One year into the insurrection its forces were reorganised along Maoist lines into a main force, mobile guerilla forces and local people's militia, with the command shared between miitary and political commissars. In September 1950 the People's Army (PA) was formed by merging the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) with Bo Zeya's Revolutionary Burma Army (RBA). Its regular forces consisted of four main divisions, each with 1,000 men under arms.
The Karen National Union
Karen National Union
The Karen National Union is a political organisation with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army that represents the Karen people of Burma. It operates in Eastern Burma, and has underground networks in other areas of Burma where Karen people live. In Karen, this Karen area is called...
(KNU) with its 'reactionary feudal leadership' was regarded as being used by the British to desatbilise the Union by both the AFPFL government and the communists, although Than Tun had supported the earlier Rakhine
Rakhine people
The Rakhine , is a nationality in Myanmar forming the majority along the coastal region of present day Rakhine State or Arakan State. They possibly constitute 5.53% or more of Myanmar's total population but no accurate census figures exist. Rakhine people also live in the southeastern parts of...
nationalist rebellion against the British, the Shan struggle against the feudal autocracy, and the Karen right to self-determination. The civil war was thus waged from three sides: the AFPFL, the Communist-PVOs and the ethnic minority nationalists with the KNU threatening Rangoon itself in early 1949. Nu estimated government casualties alone at 3,424 dead including 1,352 army personnel in 1952.
"1955 line" vs. "arms for democracy"
The communist military offensive began to run out of steam, and in 1955 the CPB put forward the 'Peace and Unity' line. It combined a strong peace movement by its above-ground supporters and sympathizers and proposals by Than Tun to the AFPFL government in 1956. War weariness had led to a desire for peace, and the move was welcomed by both the leftist opposition and conservative groups in Rangoon. Thakin Kodaw HmaingThakin Kodaw Hmaing
Thakin Kodaw Hmaing is considered one of the greatest Burmese poets, writers and political leaders in the 20th century history of Burma. He is regarded as the Father of Burmese nationalist and peace movements as well as a literary genius...
, the revered veteran nationalist leader, formed an Internal Peace Committee which in 1958 was allowed by the government to speak on the CPB's behalf. The results of the 1956 election
Burmese general election, 1956
Burma held its second general election on 27 April 1956 to vote for 202 out of 250 seats to the Burmese Chamber of Deputies; the remaining 48 were decided automatically as no opposition candidates were entered against candidates of the ruling Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League .The Anti-Fascist...
, where the National United Front did very well on a peace ticket, had also given the AFPFL a jolt.
On the international front, US support of the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT) forces, that had crossed over from Yunnan province into northeastern Burma after Mao's victory in China, had resulted in Burma's refusal to join the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
visited Rangoon on his return from the Geneva Conference on Indo-China to meet Nu, and issued a joint communique reaffirming the 'five principles of peaceful co-existence' and the right of people 'to choose their own state system'; Nu repaid the visit the same year receiving the assurance that Chinese leaders had no contact with the CPB. Ne Win
Ne Win
Ne Win was Burmese a politician and military commander. He was Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974 and also head of state from 1962 to 1981...
also led a military delegation to Beijing in 1957, and met Chairman Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. A week-long visit in December 1955 by Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense and Premier of the Soviet Union . The Bulganin beard is named after him.-Early career:...
and Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
appeared to endorse Burma as a model non-aligned, socialist Third World country developing at its own pace; Burma was a strong supporter of the 1955 Bandung Conference. Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's death and the shift in Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
policy under Khrushchev contributed to the mood of national reconciliation.
Now U Nu turned the communist peace offensive to his advantage and came up with a very successful 'arms for democracy' offer. Tatmadaw offensives in early 1956, Operation Aung Thura (Valiant Victory) in Pakokku
Pakokku
Pakokku or Pa Kok Ku is a town in the Magway Division in Myanmar. It is situated about 30 km northwest of Bagan on the Ayeyarwady River. It is the second most important education center for Sangha after Mandalay. It is the administration seat of Pakokku Township and Pakokku District.The town...
area and Operation Aung Tayza (Glorious Victory) in Pathein
Pathein
Pathein , also called Bassein, is a port city with a 2004 population estimated at 215,600, and the capital of the Ayeyarwady Region, Burma. It lies on the Pathein River , which is a western branch of the Irrawaddy River....
area, had been partly successful. The year 1958 saw mass surrenders of first the Rakhine
Rakhine people
The Rakhine , is a nationality in Myanmar forming the majority along the coastal region of present day Rakhine State or Arakan State. They possibly constitute 5.53% or more of Myanmar's total population but no accurate census figures exist. Rakhine people also live in the southeastern parts of...
nationalists led by U Seinda, next the Pa-O
Pa-O
The Pa-Oh form an ethnic group in Burma, comprising approximately 600,000. The Pa-Oh form the second largest ethnic group in Shan State, and are classified as part of the "Shan National Race" by the government, although they are believed to be of Tibeto-Burman stock, and are ethnolinguistically...
, Mon
Mon people
The Mon are an ethnic group from Burma , living mostly in Mon State, Bago Division, the Irrawaddy Delta, and along the southern Thai–Burmese border. One of the earliest peoples to reside in Southeast Asia, the Mon were responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Burma and Thailand...
, and Shan communists, but most importantly the PVO led by Bo Po Kun. The official figure was 5,500 armed insurgents that 'entered the light', of which about 800 were White Flag communists mainly in Sittwe
Sittwe
-Economy:In February 2007, India announced a plan to develop the port, which would enable ocean access from Indian Northeastern states, so called "Seven sisters", like Mizoram, via the Kaladan River....
, northern Rakhine State
Rakhine State
Rakhine State is a Burmese state. Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State in the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady Region in the east, the Bay of Bengal to the west, and the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh to the northwest. It is located approximately between...
. The one crucial exception was the KNU.
AFPFL split and caretaker government
The year 1958 also saw the AFPFL split into a 'Clean' faction led by U Nu and Thakin TIn, and a 'Stable' faction led by Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein, despite the success of the 'arms for democracy' offensive. Those groups that had taken the offer now formed legal opposition parties such as the PVO's People's Comrade Party (PCP). As Nu carried on with his 'peace initiative' wooing them for support, army hardliners began to see the threat of the CPB being allowed to re-enter mainstream politics through their agency and contest in elections. This led to Nu having to hand over power to the Army Chief of Staff U Ne Win who became prime minister of a caretaker governmentCaretaker government
Caretaker government is a type of government that rules temporarily. A caretaker government is often set up following a war until stable democratic rule can be restored, or installed, in which case it is often referred to as a provisional government...
facing opposition and protest only from the NUF and students. Over 400 communist sympathizers were arrested, and among the 153 deported to the Coco Islands in the Andaman Sea
Andaman Sea
The Andaman Sea or Burma Sea is a body of water to the southeast of the Bay of Bengal, south of Burma, west of Thailand and east of the Andaman Islands, India; it is part of the Indian Ocean....
was a leader of the NUF Aung Than, older brother of Aung San. The Botahtaung, Kyemon and Rangoon Daily newspapers were also closed down.
The military also intensified psychological warfare accusing the communists of being enemies of Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
in a widely distributed booklet titled Dhammantaraya (Dhamma in Danger). The CPB countered with a pamphlet titled Rip off the Mask reaffirming its support for Buddhism and the individual's right to practise any religion. The Tatmadaw however achieved better success in its military offensives between 1958 and 1960.
United fronts
In March 1949 the first united front to overthrow the AFPFL called the People's Democratic Front (PDF) was set up in PyayPyay
Pyay is a town in the Bago Division in Burma. It has an estimated population of 123,800 . Pyay is positioned on the Ayeyarwady River and is northwest of Yangon....
after the town was captured by a joint CPB, RBA and PVO force. The Tripartite Alliance Pact was the next, signed by Than Tun, Soe and Bo Po Kun at Alaungdaw Kathapa village near Monywa
Monywa
Monywa is a city in Sagaing Division, Myanmar, located 136 km northwest of Mandalay on the eastern bank of the River Chindwin.-Transport:...
on 1 October 1952 amidst great rejoicing. Apart from the CPB-RBA merger of September 1950, the agreements mainly involved demarcation of territory and terms of cooperation.
National Democratic United Front
In November 1952 the Zin-Zan Agreement for a ceasefire was reached between the CPB and the KNU but a military alliance did not materialise until May 1959 in the form of the National Democratic United Front(NDUF). The surrender of the smaller ethnic nationalists had put paid to the Democratic Nationalities United Front (DNUF) established in April 1956 by the KNU now dominated by the Maoist Karen National United Party (KNUP) led by Mahn Ba Zan. This left the KNU isolated and it moved closer to the CPB despite the many staunch anti-communists in the veteran Christian leadership.The NDUF also included the fledgling New Mon State Party (NMSP) formed after the surrender of the Mon People's Front (MPF) and led by Nai Shwe Kyin
Nai Shwe Kyin
Nai Shwe Kyin was a Burmese civil rights revolutionary during the country's transition from British colonial rule and through the ensuing civil war between the insurgent ruling Burmese and the Mon minority....
, the Chin National Vanguard Party (CNVP) formed in March 1956, and the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) formed in July 1957 and led by Saw Maw Reh. Both the NMSP and the KNPP had been founded with the help of the KNU. It was the most successful united front with the nationalities militarily, and lasted till 1976 when the KNU broke away from the NDUF to form the National Democratic Front (NDF). Political differences however remained unresolved as no compromise was possible between the CPB's support for regional autonomy
Autonomy
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
only as in China and the minorities' demand for self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
.
Military coup and peace parley
Ne Win's caretaker government presided over a general election in February 1960 which saw the return of U Nu to office after his Clean faction, renamed the Union Party, won a landslide majority over the Stable faction. Parliamentary democracy this time however lasted just two years before Ne Win staged the 1962 coup d'état1962 Burmese coup d'état
The 1962 Burmese coup d'état on 2 March 1962 marked the beginnings of socialist rule and the political dominance of the army in Burma which spanned the course of 26 years...
on 2 March, as the Shan Federal Movement
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
led by the first president of independent Burma Saopha
Saopha
Saopha, Chaofa, or Sawbwa was a royal title used by the rulers of the Shan States of Myanmar . The word means "king" in the Shan and Tai languages...
of Yawnghwe Saw Shwe Thaik was seen as a secessionist movement by army diehards. A major crackdown on the above-ground opposition followed, rounding up and imprisoning most of the remaining leaders of the AFPFL as well as the ethnic leaders, and as a foretaste of thngs to come a peaceful Rangoon University student protest was brutally suppressed by the military ending in the massacre of over a hundred students on 7 July 1962.
In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 5000.
Peace offensive
In 1963 Ne Win as head of the Revolutionary Council government launched a peace offensive starting with a general amnesty on 1 April. Bo Ye Htut, a member of the Thirty Comrades and central military committee of the CPB who had been to Rangoon on a secret peace mission before the 1958 AFPFL split, took the offer together with Bo Ye Maung and Bo Sein Tin. The KNU split in the same month between the KNUP and the Karen Revolutionary Council (KRC) led by Saw Hunter Tha Hmwe. The first insurgent group to arrive in Rangoon was the Red Flag delegation in June later joined by Thakin Soe himself from ArakanRakhine State
Rakhine State is a Burmese state. Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State in the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady Region in the east, the Bay of Bengal to the west, and the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh to the northwest. It is located approximately between...
in August. After just three meetings the talks were abruptly ended by the RC on 20 August and the Red Flag communists were flown back to Sittwe
Sittwe
-Economy:In February 2007, India announced a plan to develop the port, which would enable ocean access from Indian Northeastern states, so called "Seven sisters", like Mizoram, via the Kaladan River....
.
Three CPB teams arrived in July and September by air from China led by Bo Zeya, Yebaw Aung Gyi, Thakins Pu and Ba Thein Tin. These 'Beijing returnees' were allowed to travel to the party’s jungle headquarters in the Bago Yoma near Paukkaung where the leadership, reunited after 15 years, held an historic meeting of the Central Committee. Talks began on 2 September after the CPB delegation headed by the general secretary Yebaw Htay and the People's Army's chief of staff Bo Zeya arrived on 28 August. A second team headed by Thakin Zin , politbureau member and secretary of the NDUF which agreed to negotiate as one team, arrived on 20 September. Meetings with the CPB and NDUF overshadowed those with other nationalities such as the Shan and Kachin delegations.
Failure
Talks broke down on 14 November when the Revolutionary Council government demanded that:-
- All troops must be concentrated in a designated area.
- No one must leave without permission.
- All organisational work must stop.
- All fund-raising must stop.
Expectations had been running high, and the People’s Peace Committee, set up by the NUF and supported by Thakin Kodaw Hmaing
Thakin Kodaw Hmaing
Thakin Kodaw Hmaing is considered one of the greatest Burmese poets, writers and political leaders in the 20th century history of Burma. He is regarded as the Father of Burmese nationalist and peace movements as well as a literary genius...
and former brigadier Kyaw Zaw
Kyaw Zaw
Kyaw Zaw is one of the founders of the Tatmadaw and a member of the legendary "Thirty Comrades" who trained in Japan in the struggle for independence from Britain...
, staged a Six-District Peace March in early November from Minhla to Rangoon. The marchers were cheered and applauded along the entire route by large crowds chanting anti-government slogans, and given food parcels collected by the Rangoon University Students Union (RUSU) and the All Burma Federation of Student Unions
All Burma Federation of Student Unions
The All Burma Federation of Student Unions is the umbrella organisation for all the student unions in Burma and is an active voice for academic freedoms and student rights throughout the country...
(ABFSU). When they reached Rangoon at a mass rally of 200,000 in front of City Hall, speakers openly supported the NDUF’s demand to keep its weapons and territory. Although at first the CPB and NDUF had misinterpreted Ne Win’s peace offensive as a sign of weakness desperate for a solution, once they arrived in Rangoon they realised it was going to be a mainly cosmetic exercise. They therefore took the opportunity to re-establish contacts and meet family and friends.
Crackdown
Over 900 people were arrested in the immediate aftermath, mostly BWPP and NUF activists, but also Thaton Hla Pe, leader of the Union Pa-O National Organisation (UPNO) and formerly of the insurgent Pa-O National Organisation (PNO), who was one of the main organisers of the peace march, and Nai Non Lar leader of the former Mon People’s Front (MPF). By the end of the year over 2,000 were believed to be in prison. Almost the entire executive committees of the RUSU and the ABFSU fled to join the CPB.Cultural revolution
In 1967 Than Tun carried out his own cultural revolutionCultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
, purging the party of ‘revisionists’, and as in China things went out of control, gaining notoriety as the line of ‘purge, dismiss and eliminate’, before he could finally pull the reins back. Great damage nonetheless had already been done to the CPB's image, particularly the killing of young university student leaders who had joined the CPB after the failed peace parley in 1963. The country had experienced this kind of treatment of their young only recently at the hands of General Ne Win
Ne Win
Ne Win was Burmese a politician and military commander. He was Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974 and also head of state from 1962 to 1981...
's army in the 7 July 1962 massacre.
From now on the CPB would no longer be the destination and refuge of later waves of students fleeing government crackdown and suppression of major protests and demonstrations; they would instead go to ethnic rebel areas, most tellingly in the wake of the failed national uprising in 1988
8888 Uprising
The 8888 Nationwide Popular Pro-Democracy Protests was a series of marches, demonstrations, protests, and riots in the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma...
.
Genesis
The failure of the peace talks, the intensification of political repression combined with military offensives, and more significantly the military juntaMilitary junta
A junta or military junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term derives from the Spanish language junta meaning committee, specifically a board of directors...
’s manifesto of the ‘’Burmese Way to Socialism
Burmese Way to Socialism
The Burmese Way to Socialism refers to the ideology of the Socialist regime in Burma, from 1962 to 1988, when the 1962 coup d'état was led by Ne Win and the military to remove U Nu from power...
’’ soon after the coup and the founding of the Burma Socialist Programme Party
Burma Socialist Programme Party
Burma Socialist Programme Party was formed by the Ne Win's military regime that seized power in 1962 and was the sole political party allowed to exist legally in Burma during the period of military rule from 1964 until its demise in the aftermath of the popular uprising of 1988.-History:The BSPP...
(BSPP) with the help of ex-Communists, all contributed to a certain part of the CPB leadership’s review of its armed struggle which had been the main difference between the party and the above-ground leftist opposition BWPP and NUF. Goshal, Yebaw Htay and Bo Yan Aung headed the faction that now questioned the relevance of the armed struggle, and Thakins Than Tun, Zin, Chit and Bo Zeya became the majority reinforced by the ‘Beijing returnees’ headed by Yebaw Aung Gyi, a former RUSU leader whose detailed analysis of the party’s history so far was adopted as the ‘1964 line’ at the meeting of the CC near Nattalin from 9 September to 14 October 1964.
At this historic meeting, which 11 out of 20 CC members were able to attend, they reached unanimous agreement to reaffirm Burma’s status as ‘semi-colonial’ after her ‘pseudo-independence’ and the primacy of the armed struggle against Ne Win’s ‘armed counter-revolution’. The party would establish a broad alliance of the nationalities and peasants in a united front, with the key task identified as party building.
The Soviet-China split saw the CPB squarely behind the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
(CCP), rejecting the 1955 ‘revisionist’ line. On the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the party declared that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
(CPSU) was now supporting Ne Win’s ‘pseudo-socialism’.
Burma’s insurgent armies, both ethnic and communist, had been students of Mao’s Protracted War whatever their ideology. Now the CPB began to identify so closely with the CCP that it became China’s most important ally among the communist parties in the region, more so after China’s cultural revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
spilled over its borders leading to violent anti-Chinese riots in Burma with huge loss of life and property in Rangoon and the rest of the country.
Upholding the banner of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
' (MLMTT), the CPB embarked on building up rural bases called Red Power areas with ‘hard core’ activists in order to encircle the cities from the countryside for the ‘final seizure of power’ once again the strategic goal. A central school for political training in MLM was established and the first course began on 25 March 1965.
Growing dissension in the party however prompted Thakins Than Tun , Chit and the Beijing returnees to meet on 16 August 1966 in order to decide on a strategy to counter this. They borrowed directly from China in their decision to use Red Guard
Red Guards (China)
Red Guards were a mass movement of civilians, mostly students and other young people in the People's Republic of China , who were mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.-Origins:...
youth teams and chose university and high school students at the party headquarters.
Terror
On 27 April 1967 Goshal and Yebaw Htay were suspended from the politbureau, and a number of senior officials, such as Yebaw Ba Khet, sensing the danger, defected. Goshal was summarily tried and executed on 18 June followed by Htay whose own son formed part of the execution squad. They were dubbed Burma’s ‘Deng XiaopingDeng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
’ and ‘Liu Shaochi’ respectively. Than Tun and the remaining politbureau passed a resolution on 15 December to adopt the ‘intra-party revolutionary line’ and ordered party units around the country to carry out their own purges. Bo Yan Aung, who accompanied Aung San
Aung San
Bogyoke Aung San ; 13 February 1915 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese revolutionary, nationalist, and founder of the modern Burmese army, the Tatmadaw....
to Amoy
Amoy
Xiamen, or Amoy, is a city on the southeast coast of China.Amoy may also refer to:*Amoy dialect, a dialect of the Hokkien lects, which are part of the Southern Min group of Chinese languages...
on the historic journey in search of military training abroad as the first of the Thirty Comrades
Thirty Comrades
The Thirty Comrades constituted the embryo of the modern Burmese army called the Burma Independence Army which was formed to fight for independence from Britain...
, was the next victim on 26 December.
Government troops took advantage of the chaos and confusion among the communists, and on 16 April 1968, in a battle on the Pyay
Pyay
Pyay is a town in the Bago Division in Burma. It has an estimated population of 123,800 . Pyay is positioned on the Ayeyarwady River and is northwest of Yangon....
-Tharrawaddy border Bo Zeya, the People’s Army’s chief of staff and another great hero of Burma’s struggle for independence and member of the Thirty Comrades, was killed in action. Dr Nath, the other Bengali
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
founder-member of the CPB besides Goshal, was the next to fall later the same year near Hpyu in the Bago Yoma.
In August 1968 Bo Tun Nyein who led the Red Guards in the executions of Goshal, Htay and Yan Aung, was himself charged with ‘trying to set up a rival party headquarters’ and executed. Former RUSU student leaders such as Aung Thein Naing, nephew of Bo Yan Aung, and Soe Win, son of Ludu U Hla
Ludu U Hla
Ludu U Hla was a Burmese journalist, publisher, chronicler, folklorist and social reformer whose prolific writings include a considerable number of path-breaking nonfiction works...
and Daw Amar
Ludu Daw Amar
Ludu Daw Amar was a well known and respected leading dissident writer and journalist in Mandalay, Burma. She was married to fellow writer and journalist Ludu U Hla and was the mother of popular writer Nyi Pu Lay...
met the same fate the next month.
Demise of Thakin Than Tun
On 24 September 1968, whilst on the run from government troops, Than Tun was shot dead without warning by one of his bodyguards who later surrendered to Ne Win's government. The assassin had joined the Communists just two years before as an 'army deserter'. Thakin Than Tun, one of the greatest political leaders of the 20th century history of MyanmarHistory of Myanmar
The history of Burma covers the period from the time of first-known human settlements 13,000 years ago to the present day. The earliest inhabitants of recorded history were the Pyu who entered the Irrawaddy valley from the north c. 2nd century BCE. By the 4th century CE, the Pyu had founded...
, albeit now a fallen idol, died at the age of 57. He was no mere ideologue but a man of unequalled organisational skills, and the only politician who nearly matched his brother-in-law Aung San
Aung San
Bogyoke Aung San ; 13 February 1915 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese revolutionary, nationalist, and founder of the modern Burmese army, the Tatmadaw....
in reputation and status and who left his mark on every stage of Burma's struggle for national liberation.
North-East Command
The deterioration in relations between China and Burma led to the Chinese government now openly supporting the CPB, whereas it had been confined to party to party support by the CCP before. The outcome was an invasion force of 300 former First Kachin Rifles under the command of a war hero Naw Seng who had joined the Karen rebellion in 1949 and went into exile in China the next year. They entered the Shan StateShan State
Shan State is a state of Burma . Shan State borders China to the north, Laos to the east, and Thailand to the south, and five administrative divisions of Burma in the west. Largest of the 14 administrative divisions by land area, Shan State covers 155,800 km², almost a quarter of the total...
on New Year Day 1968, captured Mong Ko, and established the first war zone ‘303’ of the CPB North-East Command (NEC). This was quickly followed by ‘404’ in Kokang substate
Kokang
Kokang , formally the First Special Region, is a self-administrative region of Burma . It is located in the northern part of Shan State, with the Salween River to its west, and it shares a border with China's Yunnan Province in the east. Its total land area is around . The capital is Laukkai...
winning over the local warlord Pheung Kya-shin
Pheung Kya-shin
Pheung Kya-shin is the chairman of the Kokang Special Region in Burma and a leader of the Kokang people's army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army.-Biography:...
. Here a rival warlord Lo Hsing Han
Lo Hsing Han
Lo Hsing Han or Law Sit Han is a former Burmese drug trafficker and present-day major Burmese business tycoon, with financial ties to Singapore. He is an ethnic Kokang.-Rise and fall:...
and his Ka Kwe Yay (KKY, lit. defence) force was built up by the Tatmadaw, and another force led by a member of the Saopha
Saopha
Saopha, Chaofa, or Sawbwa was a royal title used by the rulers of the Shan States of Myanmar . The word means "king" in the Shan and Tai languages...
’s family Jimmy Yang, a former MP, was supported by the insurgent Shan State Army
Shan State Army
The Shan State Army, or SSA, was an army formed in 1964 to resist the military government of Burma in Shan State.It later split into two factions, usually known in English as the Shan State Army - South or SSA-S, which continues to oppose the government, and the Shan State Army - North or SSA-N,...
(SSA) and later by U Nu
U Nu
For other people with the Burmese name Nu, see Nu .U Nu was a leading Burmese nationalist and political figure of the 20th century...
who founded the Parliamentary Democracy Party (PDP) and launched his own armed rebellion after going into exile in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
in 1969, three years after his release from prison.
To the north, war zone ‘202’ was established along the River Shweli, but war zone ‘101’ had to be added with difficulty the following April, and only after the defection of Ting Ying and Zalum from the Kachin Independence Organisation
Kachin Independence Organisation
The Kachin Independence Organization is a political organization of Kachins in Burma which effectively controlled the Kachin State during 1960s-1990s until the 1994 cease-fire with the Myanmar government...
(KIO). The advance farther south along the border was again quickly accomplished capturing Kyukok on 28 March 1970, the anniversary of the CPB insurrection, followed by Mong Mau in northern Wa
Wa State
Wa State is an unrecognised state in Myanmar and is currently subsumed under the official Wa Special Region 2 of the Northern Shan State. The administrative capital is Pangkham . The name Wa derives from an ethnic group, who speaks a language in the Austroasiatic family of languages...
hills on 1 May. The fierce battles for Kutkai
Kutkai
Kutkai is a town and seat of Kutkai Township, in the Shan State of eastern-central Burma. It lies along National Highway 3, approximately 24 kilometres to the north of Lashio .-History:...
and Kunlong
Battle of Kunlong
The Battle of Kunlong was a 42-day military confrontation between the armed forces of the Communist Party of Burma and the Burmese Army, which took place between November 1971 and January 1972. During the battle, the communist forces sought to capture the Kunlong bridge over the Salween River...
towards the end of the year however ended in retreat. On the anniversary of the uprising in March 1971, the Voice of the People of Burma (VOPB) started its transmission from the Chinese side of the border moving into Burma only in the late 1970s.
By 1973 the NEC had overrun almost the entire Wa substate establishing a new CPB headquarters at the border village of Panghsang
Panghsang
Pangkham , formerly known as Pangsang, Panghsang before 1999, ia a town in far eastern Shan State of Myanmar . It is situated on River Nam Hka near the border with Yunnan Province, China. It is the de facto capital of Wa State, officially designated as Special Region No. 2, while Hopang is its...
. A vast area next to Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
became known as the ‘815’ military region named after the party’s founding anniversary 15 August. A 1,000 strong SSA East led by Khun Myint was also won over and merged to form the ‘768’ brigade in the Kengtung area. The plan to build up the '108' region north of Taunggyi
Taunggyi
-Transportation:The main access to Taunggyi is by road. A railway line that passes through Taunggyi was recently built in 1995, but at the moment it offers no passenger service. Regular railway passenger service to the rest of the country is through the town of Shwenyaung, twelve miles to the...
however was thwarted after the Shan state commander Bo Soe Maung, a Burma Rifle veteran, and CC member Thakin Tin Tun, a Dobama veteran, were killed in action in 1969–70 by an all out Tatmadaw offensive.
”Four Cuts”
The strategic aim of the NEC was to connect the party’s heartland of central Burma with the northeast which eventually failed due to a combination of resistance on the part of the KIO and the SSA and the government military offensives. The CPB to this end had formed seven new Taik taing aung (Ever Victorious) battalions in the Delta, Bago Yoma, North-West Division and Arakan. The Tatmadaw’s response was to embark on a scorched earthScorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
campaign, never before tried in mainland Burma, called the Hpyat lay hpyat (Four Cuts), a counter-insurgency
Counter-insurgency
A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...
programme modelled on the ‘new village’ tactics developed by the British during the Malayan Emergency
Malayan Emergency
The Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army , the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party, from 1948 to 1960....
and later adopted by the US in Vietnam as the ‘strategic hamlet’ now translated into byuha kyay-ywa, albeit ignoring the battle for 'hearts and minds'. It sought to cut the links of food, funds, information and recruits between the insurgents and their families and the local populace. The rural communities now faced the stark choice of flee, fight or join the Tatmadaw.
Black, brown and white areas were mapped out as insurgent-controlled, contested and government-controlled areas respectively. Entire districts became free-fire zones where villagers spotted outside designated areas could be shot without warning. They were forcibly relocated and also organised into a 'people's militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
' with an army garrison at the centre shielded by the village. A network of watchtowers was built covering crucial points in the entire area, and troops patrolled the area flushing out the insurgents. It proved devastatingly effective, and soon the CPB units found themselves pulling out of one area to the next with no prospect of regaining their old haunts. The Tatmadaw had created new special strike forces called Light Infantry Divisions (LID), starting with the 77th LID in 1966, then the 88th and 99th in 1967–68, all under not regional but central command.
The New Year Day of 1968 also saw the first stage of the 'Four Cuts' offensive deploying the 88th LID. Within eight years the CPB units in the Delta and Bago Yoma were decimated , the mountains virtually cleared of human habitation. The last major government military offensive code-named Operation Aung Soe Moe (Conquer and Rule) finally succeeded in wiping out the CPB in central Burma. On 15 March 1975 Thakins Zin and Chit were killed in action when finally cornered by a unit of the 77th LID they defied the demand for surrender; they were both in their mid-sixties. Zin, a wartime organiser and former leader of the All Burma Peasants organisation (ABPO), had succeeded Than Tun as chairman, and Chit, a schoolteacher who had co-founded the Socialist Party and sent several future members of the Thirty Comrades to Japan before joining the CPB and former leader of the All Burma Trade Union Congress (ABTUC), was the general secretary.
Reorganisation
A new leadership emerged in May 1975 from among the China-based leaders with Thakin Ba Thein Tin as chairman, a politbureau member and vice-chairman since 1946 and veteran organiser of Dobama and resistance against the Japanese; he was also very widely travelled. Another veteran Thakin Pe Tint and MoscowSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
-trained Khin Maung Gyi from the next generation were appointed his deputies. Ba Thein Tin signalled a change in policy in his warning against 'left dogmatism' as much as against revisionism. The party must still fight a peasant war in a semi-colonial country but forge a worker-peasant alliance and united front including the 'urban bourgeois, national capitalists, progressive democrats and all the nationalities'.
The CPB was handed a rare propaganda coup when in July 1976, former Brig. Kyaw Zaw
Kyaw Zaw
Kyaw Zaw is one of the founders of the Tatmadaw and a member of the legendary "Thirty Comrades" who trained in Japan in the struggle for independence from Britain...
, a member of the Thirty Comrades and hero of Tatmadaw’s campaigns against the KNU and the KMT in the 1950s, defected with his family to Panghsang. He was appointed to the Central Military Commission, and immediately made a damaging broadcast on Ne Win on the VOPB. For the first time in history he revealed that Aung San and others had once seriously considered removing Ne Win from the military on account of his ‘fascist’ tendencies under the Japanese. He addressed the government troops directly, “Your life is the life of an assassin and a murderer serving the power-mad and evil king Ne Win”.
Strike west
Besides the NEC, the communist People’s Army (PA) still controlled the North-West Division, Arakan and TenasserimTanintharyi
Tanintharyi or Taninthayi is a small town in Taninthayi Township, Myeik District, in the Tanintharyi Region of southwestern Burma . It is the administrative seat for the township. The town is located on the Great Tenasserim River which eventually enters the sea at Myeik...
. Ba Thein Tin drew up a plan in October 1975 called the ‘7510 plan’ to strike west and link up with the guerrilla bases on the western edge of the Shan plateau. Its first major offensive to the west of the Salween River
Salween River
The Salween is a river, about long, that flows from the Tibetan Plateau into the Andaman Sea in Southeast Asia. It drains a narrow and mountainous watershed of that extends into the countries China, Burma and Thailand. Steep canyon walls line the swift, powerful and undammed Salween, one of the...
into the Tangyang area in June had been unsuccessful after heavy fighting, even though it had inflicted heavy losses on the 99th LID earlier including its deputy-commander.
Late 1975 also saw the 815 military region launch an offensive against the 88th LID in the Mong Yawng area in order to consolidate control of the mountainous region along the Laotian border. The next year the Shan 768 brigade formed from the former SSA East began building up its own adjoining base area. Another force tried to break through from the Shweli River towards Shwebo
Shwebo
Shwebo is a city in Sagaing Division, Myanmar, located 113 km northwest of Mandalay between the Irrawaddy and the Mu rivers. The city, also called Ratanasingha , was the capital of Myanmar from 1752 to 1760 during the Konbaung period....
. The 683 brigade also struck west to link up with the former 108 region to the north of Mandalay
Mandalay
Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma. Located north of Yangon on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, the city has a population of one million, and is the capital of Mandalay Region ....
.
Counter-attack
Ne Win meanwhile extended the Four Cuts campaign to the North-West Division and Arakan driving out both KNUP and CPB units father west into northern Arakan. Bo Thet Tun, another veteran Burma Rifles officer and erstwhile comrade-in-arms of Ne Win, was in charge of the CPB’s North-West Division and something of a legend among both ethnic ChinsChin people
The Chin , known as the Kuki in Assam, are one of the ethnic groups in Burma. The Chins are found mainly in western part of Burma and numbered circa 1.5 million. They also live in nearby Indian states of Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur and Assam. Owing to Mizo influence and Baptist missionaries'...
and Bamar
Bamar
The Bamar are the dominant ethnic group of Burma , constituting approximately two-thirds of the population. The Bamar live primarily in the Irrawaddy basin, and speak the Burmese language, which is also the official language of Burma. Bamar customs and identity are closely intertwined with general...
. He and his decimated troops were eventually caught up and forced to surrender in July 1980 after the 66th LID had cleared the mountains of all human habitation.
A Tatmadaw counter-offensive code-named Operation King Conqueror was launched in November 1979 east of the Salween succeeding in recapturing the mountains overlooking Panghsang just 30 km away. In 1980 the CPB countered with two major operations briefly overrunning Muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
and later Mong Yawng 250 miles farther south. After heavy losses on both sides they had fought each other to a standstill. The ten year plan of Chinese aid to the CPB was finally coming to an end, and the supply lines stretching west of the Salween proved too long to sustain and defend, even though the CPB had by now shown its mettle in fighting set-piece battles of regular warfare as well against the Tatmadaw.
Opium warlords
When the Kokang and Wa substates came under CPB control, the party inherited an old problem namely the opium trade. The KKY forces, led by Lo Hsing HanLo Hsing Han
Lo Hsing Han or Law Sit Han is a former Burmese drug trafficker and present-day major Burmese business tycoon, with financial ties to Singapore. He is an ethnic Kokang.-Rise and fall:...
and Khun Sa
Khun Sa
Khun Sa , also known as Chang Chi-fu was a Burmese warlord. He was born in Loi Maw of Mongyai. He was also dubbed the "Opium King" due to his opium trading in the so-called Golden Triangle. He was also the leader of the Shan United Army and the Mong Tai Army.- Biography :Khun Sa was born to a...
and set up by the Tatmadaw, had engaged in opium trafficking often with the Tatmadaw officers and mainly with the KMT
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
on the Thai
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
border as business partners. Although the CPB took strong measures to eradicate poppy
Poppy
A poppy is one of a group of a flowering plants in the poppy family, many of which are grown in gardens for their colorful flowers. Poppies are sometimes used for symbolic reasons, such as in remembrance of soldiers who have died during wartime....
cultivation with crop-substitution in the early 1970s, it began to relax these restrictions later on and collected 20% of the crop as well as tax on the trade after Chinese aid eventually dried up. Its hardline Maoist stance during the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
in China had hardly endeared itself to the new premier Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
. The strategy of winning over local warlord
Warlord
A warlord is a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the ideal that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war...
s and absorbing their forces into the PA had also contributed to this politically embarrassing contradiction to its Maoist principles. In 1985 at the CPB’s Third Congress, regulations against the opium trade were introduced prohibiting party members from involvement in narcotics including a death penalty for large-scale heroin traffickers. The leadership would claim later that it was these measures which triggered the internal rebellions that led to the collapse of the party in 1989.
Minorities question
There is however a deeper issue of the nationalist struggles of Burma’s diverse ethnic minorities in relation to the CPB’s handling of the problem. Like the other BamarBamar
The Bamar are the dominant ethnic group of Burma , constituting approximately two-thirds of the population. The Bamar live primarily in the Irrawaddy basin, and speak the Burmese language, which is also the official language of Burma. Bamar customs and identity are closely intertwined with general...
–led political parties in history including the AFPFL, Ne Win’s BSPP and Nu's PDP, it too was open to criticism and allegations of chauvinism
Chauvinism
Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...
. The party had characterised its armed struggle as a 'national democratic revolution' against feudal oppression , imperialism, and 'military bureaucratic capitalism' before achieving the goal of a ‘people’s democracy’. It believed that the correct settlement of the nationalities question was the realisation of the worker-peasant alliance under the leadership of the working class namely the CPB.
Despite periodic military alliances between the party and the ethnic insurgent armies with considerable mutual benefit while they lasted, the CPB's influence proved divisive to the nationalist groups. Skaw Ler Taw, a leader of the Karen National Union
Karen National Union
The Karen National Union is a political organisation with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army that represents the Karen people of Burma. It operates in Eastern Burma, and has underground networks in other areas of Burma where Karen people live. In Karen, this Karen area is called...
(KNU), stated, “ The CPB had a standing order to split nationalist parties. Mao said that in any organisation there are three groups: the progressives, the neutrals or moderates, and the conservatives. Like Mao, the CPB’s policy was to join with the progressives, win over the neutrals and expel the die-hards”.
The nationalist groups had sent missions to China for assistance since 1968, and they usually came under intense pressure to join the communist struggle. Besides aid was only forthcoming through the CPB which would then provide training as well as arms but would also often succeed in ideological indoctrination. Consequently it has tended to split the movements into pro-CPB and anti-communist factions to this day.
New agenda
In November 1978 Thakin Ba Thein Tin presented a ‘political report’ at a historic meeting of the politbureau held in Panghsang, unanimously approved at the CC meeting in early 1979. It formed the basis of the resolutions passed in September 1985 at the CPB’s Third Congress, 40 years since the last one in Rangoon, attended by just 170 of the party’s estimated 5,000 members.- The party’s past errors of the 1955 ‘revisionist’ line and the 1964 ‘intra-party revolutionary line’ were now admitted.
- Ne Win’s regime was characterised as representing ‘imperialism, feudal-landlordism and bureaucratic capitalism’.
- The primacy of the armed struggle, Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought and China’s example was reaffirmed.
- Soviet ‘socialism-imperialism’ and Vietnam’s ‘hegemonism’ were to be resisted as much as ‘US imperialism’. The CPB had supported the Khmer RougeKhmer RougeThe Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
and written to both the Vietnamese and Cambodian parties urging them to settle their dispute peacefully. Ne Win, for his part in playing the China card, also happened to be the first head of state to pay a visit to Phnom PenhPhnom PenhPhnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic and industrial activities, as well as the center of security,...
after the Khmer Rouge came to power.
The party’s general programme was drawn up in the light of ‘the experiences of the last 30 years of the armed struggle’.
- It warned against ‘sectarianism’ and ‘leftist’ and ‘rightist deviationism’.
- The party’s constitution was revised to ‘suit the changing conditions’ of the world.
- New ‘party building’, ‘military’ and ‘agricultural’ lines were adopted.
- Party membership had failed to fulfil the 1964 directive of recruiting at least one member from every village.
- The new military line would be ‘strategic defence’ at a time when the party was weak and the enemy strong.
- Because Burma was still a ‘backward semi-colonial, semi-feudal, agrarian country with uneven political and economic development’, ‘agrarian revolution’ with the slogan 'land to the tillers' was still the basis of a ‘people’s war’ waged by building up Red Power areas and encircling the cities. In insisting on not ‘copying the October RevolutionOctober RevolutionThe October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
of Russia’ by calling a ‘general strike and uprising’ (in BurmeseBurmese languageThe Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
– thabeikson thabonhta), it appeared to have ignored the recent upheavals of 1974–76 in the cities.
Peace parley 1980–81
Shortly after Burma resigned from the Non-Aligned MovementNon-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...
in protest against Soviet and Vietnamese manipulation at the September 1979 Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
Conference, the Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua paid a visit to Rangoon. Ne Win announced an amnesty in 1980 which saw the return of U Nu
U Nu
For other people with the Burmese name Nu, see Nu .U Nu was a leading Burmese nationalist and political figure of the 20th century...
and others from Thailand. The CPB responded with an attack on Mong Yawng, but proposed talks in September after letting the amnesty expire. The first meeting took place in Beijing in October between the teams led by Ba Thein Tin and Ne Win who paid a surprise visit to China leaving the Kachin delegation in the middle of the talks in Rangoon. At the second meeting headed by Thakin Pe Tint for the CPB and Maj. Gen. Aye Ko for the BSPP the following May in Lashio
Lashio
Lashio is the largest town in northern Shan State, Myanmar, about northeast of Mandalay. It is situated on a low mountain spur overlooking the valley of the Nam Yao river. The population grew from around 5000 in 1960 to 88,590 in 1983. It is currently estimated at around 130,000.Lashio is the...
, three new conditions were put on the table by Aye Ko:
-
- The abolition of the CPB.
- The abolition of the PA under the command of the CPB.
- The abolition of all the ‘liberated areas’.
The CPB was told that according to Article 11 of the 1974 Constitution which had established Burma as a one-party state there was no place for another political party. Ne Win ended the peace talks on 14 May and let the ceasefire deadline of 31 May with the KIO pass without replying to the Kachin position. There had been no ceasefire agreement with the CPB.
The VOPB began to broadcast appeals for ending the civil war, developing democracy and building national unity in a new multi-party system
Multi-party system
A multi-party system is a system in which multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government separately or in coalition, e.g.The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in the United Kingdom formed in 2010. The effective number of parties in a multi-party system is normally...
. The CPB still commanded 15,000 troops in the north-east, and the Tatmadaw, after resuming the Operation King Conqueror belatedly in 1982 and having suffered losses amounting to several hundred in the Kengtung-Tangyang area from CPB counter-attacks, finally retreated. Both sides now faced another challenge in the rising strength of the National Democratic Front (NDF) formed in 1976, pointedly excluding the Bamar
Bamar
The Bamar are the dominant ethnic group of Burma , constituting approximately two-thirds of the population. The Bamar live primarily in the Irrawaddy basin, and speak the Burmese language, which is also the official language of Burma. Bamar customs and identity are closely intertwined with general...
, by the ethnic insurgencies uniting the Karen, Mon, Kachin, Shan,Pa-O, Karenni, Kayan, Wa and Lahu, particularly with the return of the KIO in 1983 after its separate peace talks with the BSPP failed. This finally led to the CPB reaching an agreement with the NDF in 1986.
8888 Uprising
However much the military junta tried to lay the blame at the CPB’s door for the tremendous upheavals in 1988, the economic collapse that resulted in the country being granted recognition by the UN as one of the Least Developed CountriesLeast Developed Countries
Least developed country is the name given to a country which, according to the United Nations, exhibits the lowest indicators of socioeconomic development, with the lowest Human Development Index ratings of all countries in the world...
in the world in 1987 and simmering discontent over the years compounded by yet another round of ‘demonetization’ culminated in a great outburst of angry protests and demonstrations countrywide which led to a national uprising on 8 August 1988. It was brutally crushed by the Tatmadaw, killing thousands of civilians and this time in the cities alleging communist infiltration.
Kyin Maung, then politbureau member in charge of the CPB underground Task Force 4828 (named after the 28 March 1948 insurrection), was forthright in admitting the presence of cadres in the cities including Thet Khaing, son-in-law of Kyaw Zaw
Kyaw Zaw
Kyaw Zaw is one of the founders of the Tatmadaw and a member of the legendary "Thirty Comrades" who trained in Japan in the struggle for independence from Britain...
, but asserted that the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) had greatly exaggerated the party’s 'leading role' in the uprising. The party had begun advocating a multi-party democracy system after 1981, and it was not until 28 March 1988, the anniversary of the insurrection, that it called for a provisional government composed of various opposition parties, forces and personages. The students’ call for an interim government in order to end one-party rule and to hold multi-party elections never materialised as U Nu
U Nu
For other people with the Burmese name Nu, see Nu .U Nu was a leading Burmese nationalist and political figure of the 20th century...
and Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi, AC is a Burmese opposition politician and the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, her National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained...
could not agree to work together, and this failure to achieve a united opposition sealed the fate of the uprising.
Former communists, both CPB and Red Flag, and leftwing sympathizers old and new were active organisers and supporters of the democracy movement and strike committees in the cities. Kyin Maung stated,”We had never said that we initiated the upheavals. Nor did we say that our cadres comprised the leading core. On the contrary, we firmly believe that the upheavals had so much impact only because all the forces for democracy took part. Marxism holds that it is the people who make history”. Neither the CPB nor the NDF took advantage of the deep crisis that the government found itself in, the former evidently unprepared for an urban uprising as opposed to a peasant war, and the ethnic armies apparently regarding it as an internal Burman
Bamar
The Bamar are the dominant ethnic group of Burma , constituting approximately two-thirds of the population. The Bamar live primarily in the Irrawaddy basin, and speak the Burmese language, which is also the official language of Burma. Bamar customs and identity are closely intertwined with general...
issue.
Unfinished business
From 1948 to 1989, the CPB waged armed revolution for a people's democracy and socialist society. During this period the party turned again into an underground political organisation. By 1989, the party had been greatly weakened by internal rebellions that resulted in the exile of its leaders to China, although it has carried on with clandestine political activities.Actual party membership is estimated to be no more than around 3,000 at any one time, even though in its heyday the CPB could muster troops in tens of thousands and around a million-strong peasant organisation. The party continues to recruit according to the 'hard to join, easy to quit' principle.http://www.cpburma.org/ Some analysts still consider the CPB a force to be reckoned with in future upheavals and potentially a major challenge to the military regime.
External links
- Official site
- The Nu-Attlee Treaty and Let Ya-Freeman Agreement, 1947 Online Burma/Myanmar Library
- Burma Communist Party's Conspiracy to take over State Power and related information Online Burma/Myanmar Library
- Sixty Fighting Years Guardian, Communist Party of AustraliaCommunist Party of AustraliaThe Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
, 20 October 1999 - No Option but Armed Struggle if Talks Fail: CP Burma Communist Party of India (Marxist)Communist Party of India (Marxist)The Communist Party of India is a political party in India. It has a strong presence in the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. As of 2011, CPI is leading the state government in Tripura. It leads the Left Front coalition of leftist parties in various states and the national parliament of...
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July 2005 - Book Review: Burma and the KGB Bertil LintnerBertil LintnerBertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist based in Thailand and the author of several works on Asia, including Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia and Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea Under The Kim Clan....
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1 February 2007 - Top militia chief is top drug producer S.H.A.N.Shan Herald News AgencyThe Shan Herald Agency for News is a private, nonprofit organization which attempts to fill the information void and shed light on the current situation in Shan State in Burma, where the media is closely controlled and censored....
- The Civil War Question in Burmese, Nguyinpyin.net
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, 28 February 2008 - Secrets of Commune 4828 Aung Zaw, The IrrawaddyThe IrrawaddyThis article is about a newsmagazine. For other uses of the term, please see Irrawaddy.For the Second World War battle honour, see Battle of Pokoku and Irrawaddy River operations...
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, 3 March 2009