By February 1967, political opinion at the center had decided on the removal of the Red Guards from the Cultural Revolution scene in the interest of stability.[39] The PLA forcibly suppressed the more radical Red Guard groups in Sichuan, Anhui, Hunan, Fujian, and Hubei provinces in February and March. Students were ordered to return to schools; student radicalism was branded 'counterrevolutionary' and banned.[40] These groups, as well as many of their supporters, were later branded May Sixteenth elements after an ultra-left Red Guard organization based in Beijing.