Malayan Races Liberation Army

Malayan National Liberation Army 马来亚民族解放军 Tentera Pembebasan Rakyat Malaya
Participant in the Malayan Emergency
Flag of the MRLA.
Active	1948–1989
Ideology	Communism Maoism Marxism–Leninism
Leaders	Chin Peng Abdullah CD
Headquarters	Northern Areas of the Malayan jungle and Southern Thailand
Area of operations	Various areas of the Malayan jungle and Southern Thailand
Strength	8,000soldiers
Originated as	Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army Young Malays Union
Opponents	United Kingdom Australia New Zealand Federation of Malaysia Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Fiji
Battles and wars	Malayan Emergency Communist insurgency in Malaysia (1968–89)

The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), often mistranslated as the Malayan Races Liberation Army or MRLA, was a guerrilla army based in the Malayan peninsula and Singapore. It originally fought the Japanese during the second world war as the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), from 1948-1960 it fought British and Commonwealth forces for an independent Malaya. In 1968 the MNLA resurged operating from Southern Thailand it fought against the Malaysian government in various areas of the Malayan jungle mainly in the North. In 1989 the Malayan Communist Party signed a peace treaty with the Malaysian state and the MNLA and the Party settled in villages in southern Thailand.

Malayan Races Liberation Army is a translation from the Chinese 马来亚民族解放军 where 民族 means "nationality" in the ethnic sense. The organization's leader Chin Peng has called this a mistranslation and corrected it to Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). The name of the MNLA in Malay (Malay: Tentera Pembebasan Rakyat Malaya) could also be translated as the Malayan People's Liberation Army although extant records show that the title Tentera Pembebasan Nasional Malaya or MNLA became the normal self-identity by the 1970s.

The MNLA was a guerrilla force created by the Malayan Communist Party and, to some extent, led and dominated by overseas Chinese communists. It was a successor of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), another guerrilla force which the British had secretly trained and equipped with arms during World War II in the fight against the Japanese Occupation. The Communist Party, which had been banned in the pre-war years, was thereafter granted legal recognition by the British after the war as a reward for its wartime effort, but had secretly kept some of the MPAJA's weapons for future use.