COLOMBO, Oct 20: A leading Sri Lankan daily has advised Indian leaders to keep off the Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka and look after the poor in their own country.

A front page editorial in The Island daily on Monday pointed out that the Global Hunger Index (GHI) had found that 200 million of India’s 1.2 billion people went hungry and the food shortage in Madhya Pradesh was comparable with Ethiopia and Chad.

The survey had further said that three-quarters of Indians were living on 30 cents a day. “Charity, Chief Minister Karunanidhi should be told, begins at home!”

The editorial pointed out that the Sri Lankan state had been sending food to the LTTE controlled areas right through the conflict unlike the US government under Abraham Lincoln which had adopted the “scotched earth” policy to bring the rebel American states into submission.

The Sunday Island had reminded that government hospitals and doctors in the LTTE controlled areas treated injured and sick LTTE cadres (and that too free of cost!).

“Terrorism thrives on well orchestrated false propaganda if not diabolical lies. The lunatic fringe in Tamil Nadu is accusing Sri Lanka of committing genocide.

The problem with such Goebbelsian lies is that unless they are nipped in the bud, terrorists manage to pass them off as the gospel truth,” The Island said.

Looking at the Sri Lankan situation from another angle, the Tamil daily Sudar Oli said on Monday that it could not be denied that the Tamils in the Wanni were facing a situation which no other people had faced. Their own government was using aerial bombardment to subdue them.

It pointed out that India had not used the air force to bring the Kashmiri rebels to their knees.

And when Saddam Hussein was using the air force to bombard the Kurdish areas, the Americans had warned him of punitive action if such bombardment was not stopped.

Sudar Oli wondered why India and the United States had turned a blind eye to the continuous and systematic use of aerial bombardment of the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka.