Communist Party of Thailand

Communist Party of Thailand พรรคคอมมิวนิสต์แห่งประเทศไทย
Abbreviation	CPT
Founded	1942 (1942)
Dissolved	Last active in the 1990s
Split from	South Seas Communist Party
Newspaper	Mahachon
Militant wing	People's Liberation Army of Thailand
Radio	Voice of the People of Thailand
Ideology	Communism Marxism–Leninism Stalinism Maoism
Political position	Far-left
Anthem	Phuphan Partiwat [th] (The Revolutionary Mountain)
Party flag
Politics of Thailand Political parties Elections

The Communist Party of Thailand (Abrv: CPT; Thai: พรรคคอมมิวนิสต์แห่งประเทศไทย, RTGS: phak khommiwnit haeng prathet thai) was a communist party in Thailand active from 1942 until the 1990s.

Initially known as the Communist Party of Siam, the party was founded officially on 1 December 1942, although communist activism in the country began as early as 1927. In the 1960s, the CPT grew in membership and support and by the early 1970s was the second largest communist movement in mainland Southeast Asia (after Vietnam). The party launched a guerrilla war against the Thai government in 1965. Even though the CPT suffered internal divisions, at its political peak the party effectively acted as a state within the state. Its rural support is estimated to have been at least four million people; its military arm consisted of 10–14,000 armed fighters.^[1] Its influence was concentrated in the northeastern, northern and southern Thailand.^[2] Following a series of internal party disputes, changes in international communist alliances, successful counter-insurgency policies of Thailand's government including a widely accepted offer of amnesty for party cadres, and the Cold War coming to its conclusion, the party disappeared from the political scene in the early-1990s.