By Robert Evans GENEVA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - A key United Nations rights body voiced alarm on Monday at mounting racial violence in Russia and called on Moscow to take firm action against ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups and hate speech in the media. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also urged the Russian government to hold an investigation into police repression of Georgians in Russia in 2006. The Committee said it was "gravely concerned about the alarming increase in the incidence and severity of racially motivated violence, especially by young people belonging to extremist groups". The targets of violence and hate speech, it said, were Chechens and other people from the Caucasus, people from Central Asia, Roma, Meskhetian Turks, ethnic minorities of Jewish or Muslim faith and Africans. The Committee's report followed a discussion its 18 expert members held with a Russian delegation -- and with rights groups from the country -- earlier this month as part of a review of U.N. states' racism record. Russian human rights activists said during the hearings that police often stood by when skinhead and neo-Nazi groups staged demonstrations against Jews, ethnic minorities or foreigners. OFFICIAL RACISM The Committee said a "thorough investigation" was needed into events in 2006, which Tbilisi at the time said reflected official racism against Georgians, stoking tension between the two former Soviet states. According to reports cited by the Committee, Russian police rounded up hundreds of Georgians and ethnic Georgians with Russian citizenship, held them in packed jails and deported them to Georgia with little or no legal process. The review was held before this month's conflict setting Russian and pro-Russian forces against Georgian troops in and around Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. Roma also suffered from discrimination, the report said, asserting that courts around the country were ordering the destruction of well-established settlements while children attending school were put in special classes. It called on Russia to take action against police and other officials engaging in "racially selective arrests, searches or other unwarranted acts" based on how people looked. The Committee noted the government had tried to combat incitement to racial, ethnic and religious hatred in the media and, to a lesser degree, by political figures and parties. But it said there had been an increase in racist and xenophobic statements in the media and by public officials. (Editing by Meg Clothier)
A worker uses an excavator to tear down a house in the now abandoned Georgian village of Tamarasheni on the outskirts of South Ossetia's main city Tskhinvali August 18, 2008. Russian ...
