Читать онлайн "International Maoism in the Developing World" - Alexander Robert Jackson - RuLit

She added, “Initially… it was believed that the new party might be more Maoist but less pro-PRC than its rival, but in time it came to sound more like the CPM in this regard...”[827]

The Maoists in Sarawak

Communism in Sarawak began principally among students in the Chinese-language schools there. In 1951 the Sarawak Overseas Democratic Youth League was organized. After establishment of the Malaysian Federation in 1963, young Sarawak Chinese, with the help of the Indonesian Communist Party and some pro-Communist Indonesian military commanders, launched a “people’s war” akin to that in Malaya, but on a much more limited scale.[828]

The political leadership of the guerrillas was in the hands of what called itself the North Kalimantan Communist Party (NKCP). Its military units were referred to as the North Kalimantan People’s Guerrilla Force.[829]

In October 1973, the government offered amnesty to the Sarawak guerrillas; about 1,500 of them accepted this offer and disarmed. This was said to be about two-thirds of all those who had been conducting guerrilla activities. However, a number of Maoist insurrectionaries continued to be active throughout the 1970s and 1980s.[830] There were no such guerrilla activities reported in the other East Malaysian state of Sabah.[831]

Like its counterparts in Malaya, the North Kalimantan Communist Party was pro-Chinese, and supported the successors of Mao Tse-tung. In 1978, on the occasion of the Chinese 5th National People’s Congress, the NKCP sent a message of congratulations, and praised Hua Kuo-feng as “Chairman Mao’s good student and successor.”[832]

End of Armed Struggle

Between 1987 and 1990, the long-running Maoist Communist insurrection in Malaysia largely ceased. In 1987 the Malaysian Communist Party’s guerrillas laid down their arms.[833] In 1989, the leadership of the senior Maoist group, the Communist Party of Malaya, signed an agreement with the governments of Malaysia and Thailand to put an end to its military activities.[834]

In the months that followed this agreement, various guerrilla groups turned in their weapons. The Communists sought to find entry into the country’s civilian politics.

The North Kalimantan Communist Party signed a peace agreement with the Malaysian government in October 1990. Subsequently, fifty-three of the party’s guerrillas surrendered. The government announced that former guerrillas would enjoy the rights of citizenship after their reincorporation into civil society.[835]

Conclusion

Virtually from its inception, the Communist Party of Malaya was China-oriented, partly because a large part of its membership was ethnically Chinese. It was one of the first parties outside of China to seek to put into practice the policy of “popular war.” Subsequently, the also largely ethnic Chinese Communist Party in Sarawak followed the path of the Malayan party.

So long as Mao was alive, the Chinese party gave more or less extensive support to the insurrections in Malaysia. However, such backing declined thereafter, and by the end of the 1980s, the Maoists of Malaysia had decided to give up the guerrilla road to power.

Maoism in Nepal

The Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) was founded in 1949. In the following year, two factions developed within it, one “moderate,” led by Keshar Jang Rayamajhi; the other “revolutionary,” at first led by Pushpa Lal. When, in 1960, King Mahendra ended a short experiment with democracy, which had brought the Nepali Congress Party to power, the moderate Communists supported the king’s move. The revolutionaries opposed it, and their leaders fled to India, whence they continued to direct the activities of their followers in Nepal.

However, in 1962, there was a split within the ranks of the revolutionary CPN, when Pushpa Lal supported India during its short border war with China. Tulai Dala Amayta backed the Chinese, and established his own party. That group largely dominated the student movement in the 1960s and 1970s.[836]

The Chinese took some limited interest in the revolutionary element among the Nepalese Communists. Barbara Reid reported in 1976 that “Competing factions of the revolutionary CPN have appealed to China for closer working relationships, but Chinese involvement appears limited to some financial support. … The Moderate CPN is recognized and given financial assistance by the Soviet Union.”[837]

By the end of the 1970s, the most radical faction of the revolutionary CPN was led by Man Mohna Adhikari. It strongly opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.[838]

The group led by Man Mohna Adhikari, which called itself the Nepal Communist Party, after first supporting, finally turned against, the Chinese successors of Mao Tse-tung. The first plenum of its 4th Central Committee, meeting in July 1981, adopted a resolution that said it “holds that a counter-revolution has taken place in China on 6 October 1976 and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has been established there.”

The resolution said, “In the past, due to our insufficient knowledge and clarity of Chinese affairs, our party supported the revisionist leadership of Hua Kuo-feng and some of their revisionist policies, particularly the so-called three world theory, and expressed the view that between two superpowers American imperialism is less dangerous. This Plenum regards those ideas as wrong and rejects and withdraws them.”[839]

However, this faction of the Nepalese Communists did not endorse the Albanian attack on the Chinese leadership. The Central Committee’s resolution said, “while opposing Chinese revisionism, we should be careful not to follow Russian revisionism and the Albanian ‘leftist’ deviation or any other rightist or ‘leftist’ deviation.”

When elections were held in 1981 for the National Panchayat (Parliament), most Nepalese Maoists boycotted the process. But Barbara Reid reported that “a small number of supporters of other extremist factions or pro-Chinese sympathizers won seats.” Maoist influence was particularly noticeable among the students, through the All Nepal Nationalist Independent Students Union.[840]

In 1985 Chitra Krishna Tiwari reported that the Nepalese Communists were divided into eight factions. Two of these, formerly Maoist, were “neutralist.” The Nepal Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) was pro-Chinese and had three factions within it, one of which was an offshoot of the Indian Naxalites. There were also three factions within the pro-Moscow Communist group.[841]

Three years later, Chitra K. Tiwari said that there were nine Communist factions, with those that were pro-Beijing or Maoist representing “almost 75 percent of members.” He wrote, “The Fourth Congress faction formerly led by Mohan Bokram Ghasti is now divided into three factions: the Fourth Congress, the Mashal, and the Behamut Mashal. … They hold the view that true communism does not exist anywhere in the world, and they will put their faith in the thought and activities of China’s disgraced Gang of Four.” Another group, the Nepal Workers and Peasants Organization, with influence in the area of Bhaktapur, “differs from the other Maoist organizations in that it relies on legal or systematic means to promote its ideology.”[842]