The Malaysian Communist Party (MCP) was an underground Malaysian communist party. MCP traced its roots to splinter groups amongst communist guerrillas in southern Thailand in the 1970s. The party conducted armed struggle in the Malaysian-Thai border areas between 1983 and 1987. It eventually accepted a deal for cessation of hostilities with the Thai military and its cadres were resettled in 'friendship villages'. Foundation The party was formed on 5 December 1983 through the merger of two Communist Party of Malaya splinter groups; the Communist Party of Malaya/Revolutionary Faction and the Communist Party of Malaya/Marxist–Leninist. The two key leaders of MCP were Ah Leng (General Secretary of the party, hailing from CPM/ML) and Huang Chen (former CPM/RF leader). MCP traced its roots to a crisis in the CPM in the Thai–Malaysian border regions following a 1968–1970 internal purge. Up to 200 cadres were estimated to have killed in the purge, resulting in two out of four guerrilla camps of the Malayan National Liberation Army in the area rebelling against the CPM leadership. In 1970 the Sadao Camp of the 8th MNLA regiment broke away, forming CPM/RF. Later the second district of the 12th MNLA regiment, based at the Betong West Camp, broke away and formed CPM/ML. Both CPM/RF and CPM/ML repeatedly denounced the CPM leader Chin Peng as counter-revolutionary. MCP called on CPM members to join the new party. The merger of CPM/RF and CPM/ML had been preceded by failed reconciliation talks in Beijing between the CPM and the break-away groups. Political line MCP sought to apply Marxism–Leninism to Malaysian conditions. Both of the founding factions of MCP had rejected the application of the Maoist line of encircling the cities from the country-side in Malaysian context, as the peasantry was predominantly Malay whilst communist cadres were predominantly Chinese. MCP sought to gain support from both Chinese urban workers as well as Malay peasants. MCP called for the building of a people's democratic united front to defeat 'the reactionary Kuala Lumpur regime'. The party argued that "[t]he reactionary Kuala Lumpur regime is using various means to implement its suppressive, discriminatory, and divide-and-rule policy and is deliberately pitting various groups against one another and destroying the harmony among these groups. Furthermore, they are colluding more actively with foreign monopolistic and capitalistic groups and developing through various means bureaucratic, monopolistic capitalists, accelerating the new economic policy, and crazily confiscating and selling the country's natural