Indian-origin man held for gluing feet to floor in climate protest at US Open

New York: An Indian-origin man was arrested after gluing his feet to the stadium floor in a dramatic climate protest at the US Open and disrupting the match for about 50 minutes on Saturday.

The protester Sayak Mukhopadhyay said that it was a way of conveying the message directly to the people as other methods have been ineffective.

The incident took place at the Arthur Ashe Stadium during the US Open tennis match between American Coco Gauff and Czech Karolina Muchova.

Mukhopadhyay and two others from the group Extinction Rebellion NYC stood up shouting “No tennis on a dead planet”, and “End fossil fuels” before he removed his shoes and glued his feet to the floor, making it difficult for police to remove him.

“The climate change movement has tried everything from writing and lobbying for legislation to demonstrating and blockading banks, but none of that has been as effective as communicating directly to the public by going to public institutions like museums and sporting arenas," he said.

Gauff, who defeated Muchova in that game and went on to win the US Open, said at a news conference that she couldn’t get “too mad” at the antic because “it was done in a peaceful way”.

“I believe in climate change,” she added.

According to the New York Police Department, Mukhopadhyay was charged with trespassing.

It said in a statement that the department’s Emergency Service Unit personnel were able to “safely free him” and arrest him. He was later released with a notice to appear in court.

According to an Extinction Rebellion NYC post on X social media, 50-year-old Mukhopadhyay moved to New York from his native Kolkata 25 years ago. It quoted him as saying that he was horrified by the climate injustice faced by people in India who have to pay the price for the climate change caused by emissions produced by developed countries.

“India is something I constantly think about because I grew up there and I am keenly aware of how low the level of resource consumption and energy consumption is there," he said.

But the people of the Gangetic Delta are the ones "going to pay the price for this huge amount of resources and energy consumption in the global north”, he added.

The group organises sensational protests about climate change. It announced that it is holding on Sunday a naked bicycle procession “to end fossil fuels”.

With inputs from IANS