The government exploited the crisis in the cpt by offering in
1979 a general amnesty for political crimes engineered by defence
minister (and later prime minister), General Prem Tinsulanon.
Prem’s experience in counter-insurgency in the North-east led him
to pursue a political rather than military solution to defeat communism.
The amnesty led to the defection from the cpt ranks of
students as well as of many rural supporters who, after laying down
their weapons in ceremonies of reconciliation, were embraced as
‘fellow developers of the Thai nation’. Communist insurgency
along the southern border was also dwelt a mortal blow by the concerted
action of the Thai and Malaysian armies. Mass defection, the
takeover of forest sanctuaries and factional struggle threw the cpt
into disarray; its fourth clandestine congress in 1982 acknowledged
tactical and ideological errors but also reaffirmed the party’s Maoist
line. Alleged communist activists were sporadically apprehended
through the rest of the decade but by 1989, when the fall of the
Berlin Wall marked the end of communism in the West and the prc
intensified economic modernization after crushing the opposition
in Tiananmen Square, Thai communism was already history.