Nadezhda Kutepova is a Russian environmentalist and sociologist born in Ozersk in 1972, one of Russia's secret cities (ZATO) within the Chelyabinsk region which is under strict control of the Russian Federal Security System. As founder and director of the Planeta Nadezhd (Planet of Hopes) organisation, Kutepova's focus is on the human and ecological rights of the people living in the Chelyabinsk region which have suffered from nuclear pollution for over half a century.
Kutepova fights for the education of the people and their human rights in the light of the infringements of environmental law due to the nuclear catastrophe in Mayak.
Planet of Hopes promotes other initiatives within Russia's closed nuclear cities with the same cause, whose inhabitants are prone to become subject to prosecution by the Federal Security Service and governmental arbitrariness.
Since 2004 Kutepova has lead several court cases in the Chelyabinsk area in defense of the victims regarding general compensation for radiation contamination, and also in several other cases such as the attempt to change the policies of restricted entrance to the secret cities, on the protection of the rights of the widows of the liquidators that had been in charge of the clean-up after the nuclear accident in 1957, as well as cases in defense of their descendants.
Currently Kutepova is representing 105 citizens of the Russian Federation in the court of human rights (Strasbourg) together with lawyers of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre.
Kutepova is laureate of the Nuclear-Free Future Award 2011.
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