Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.”

In 2000, Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali Reddy, owner of Pasand restaurant, the Shattuck Down Low and other businesses, was charged with bringing 25-100 people from his village in India to work for little or no pay in his restaurants and businesses. He was also convicted of trafficking at least 3 young women, some minors, for forced sex. ASATA focused on reframing the issues in the case from immigration fraud and sex scandal to issues of sexual and labor trafficking and exploitation, and urged the South Asian community to hold Reddy accountable for his exploitative actions.

Sexual trafficking is when abuse of power, force, coercion, fraud, abduction, or deception is used to transport people for commercial sex acts.

* Sexual trafficking is only one form of human trafficking fueled by the same injustices of
- social, economic, and gender inequality,
- unfair labor and immigration laws,
- unequal enforcement of labor protection laws,
- civil unrest fueled by domestic and international laws,

International and domestic labor and sex trafficking are fueled by social, economic, and gender inequality, xenophobic immigration laws, environmental degradation, civil unrest, militarization, and poverty. We believe that ending the forced and coerced migration of people from their homelands for work abroad is inherently linked to the elimination of the root causes of racism, neo-liberalism, patriarchy, and poverty.