RUSSIA: Moscow police have ordered schools to provide them with lists of pupils with Georgian surnames as a purge against the citizens of its southern neighbour gathers pace.
In a move that has sent chilling reminders of the excesses of the Stalin era, the schools have been told to identify all children, however young, and send their names to the police.
The demand comes amid a Kremlin campaign of arrest and deportation of Georgian citizens in apparent retaliation for the arrest last week of Russian military officers accused of spying in Tblisi.
The officers were released on Monday, but the Kremlin has increased pressure throughout the week on Georgia, blockading road, rail, air and postal links, and sending navy ships to the Georgian coast.
Nina Zubareva, an official from school 1289 in northern Moscow, said police had phoned to demand a list of pupils with Georgian surnames.
"There are very few pupils with Georgian surnames in our school and we have honoured the police request," she said. "Their families have been living in Moscow for years."
Police have denied the report, but Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted an unnamed interior ministry official as saying the report was true, that the children's names would be a good way of hunting down Georgians living in the city.
Across Moscow, police have spent the week raiding Georgian restaurants, shops and businesses, including the city's two biggest casinos, both of which are now closed. The owners of many Georgian businesses have fled.
The first plane-load of 132 Georgians, who had been arrested with visa irregularities, were flown out of Russia yesterday and the authorities say thousands more may follow.
"What Russia is doing is not xenophobia, it is a soft form of ethnic cleansing," Georgian foreign minister Gela Bezhuashvili told reporters.
Russia's prosecutor-general Yuri Chaika insisted its retaliatory measures were "being carried out within the framework of the law".
Selective law enforcement is a long-standing Kremlin tactic against opponents.
One of Russia's top novelists, crime writer Grigory Chkhartishvili, said he had been targeted by tax police because, although Russian, he has a Georgian surname.
President Vladimir Putin has warned "foreign sponsors", believed to refer to America, to keep out of the way of Russia's blockade of Georgia.
Diplomats in Moscow say the Kremlin has decided to make an example of Georgia, furious that it would dare to arrest officers from its giant neighbour.
"Putin wants to show he is determined," said one western official. "The trouble is, where will it end?"