002/19-09-2007-ECCC-OCIJ ЮŲŠ / No: D427 244. Witnesses were further told that it was necessary to remove people from Phnom Penh to organise927 and clean up the city928 such as clearing away the ammunition.929 245. Certain political justifications were also provided: some witnesses state that they were told that “Angkar” was waiting930 for them; that they were needed to build the rural economy,931 to build dams, canals, and work in the rice fields;932 and that the only persons authorised to remain in the city were members of the military working there.933 Others have also referred to the food shortage in Phnom Penh as a reason for the population movement and that food was supposedly more plentiful in the countryside.934 246. These justifications referred to in the evidence of witnesses have been echoed in statements made by the Charged Persons. Ieng Thirith has referred generally in an interview she gave to a journalist in 1980 to the economic, political and military reasons for the movement of people from Phnom Penh.935 247. Ieng Sary has stated in an interview with a journalist in 1975, as reiterated at a conference in 1978, that the primary reason for the population movement was food. He states that initially it was thought that there were two million people in Phnom Penh, however it was later discovered that the population of the city was actually three million. He states that prior to the CPK regime, Cambodia had received between 30 to 40,000 tons of food a month from the United States and that the CPK did not wish to ask the international community for aid, but that the CPK would have been unable to transport food from the countryside into the cities.936 Khieu Samphan has also stated in a radio interview in 2007 that the population was starving at the time, but conceded that there was not enough food in the countryside either; so people ate bananas with rice or manioc and only limited food aid was delivered from the allies of the CPK.937 However, in a prior statement, Khieu Samphan asserted that any government recently out of war would have faced the problem of starvation and he asserted that after moving people out of Phnom Penh, people had enough food in cooperatives.938 248. The Charged Persons have also referred to the ideology of the regime as a justification for the population movement. In the face of the food crisis, Nuon Chea has asserted that the objective of the regime was to remain independent and sovereign.939 Khieu Samphan has also stated that Pol Pot did not want to live under the control of foreigners.940 The movement of people from the cities into the countryside has also been referred to by Nuon Chea as a component of the socialist revolution.941 Ieng Sary has stated that the objective was to transform the uninhabited quarters of the city into industrial sites.942 He also stated that it was necessary to train the people from the cities to endure moral and physical sufferings through Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, National Road 4, Choam Chao, Dangkao Phnom Penh Mailing address: P.O. Box 71, Phnom Penh; Tel: +855(0)23 218914 Fax: +855(0) 23 218941. 65