KEY POINTS:
A thousand candles burned on the streets of Manurewa last night.
The south Auckland suburb has featured in the news this week, following the murder of shopkeeper Navtej Singh.
But about 1000 residents proved there was more to their home area than one tragic story.
Holding candles, passing around collection buckets to help the Singh family, and walking the streets of Randwick Park as a unified community of many ethnicities, the quiet march was a burning light on a dark night, at the end of a dark week.
Manukau City Councillor for Manurewa Daniel Newman, marching with the crowd, said the community was home to thousands of decent, law-abiding people. It was a community proud of its neighbourhood, he said.
"So often the suburbs of Manurewa get a raw deal. Well, the local people came together tonight to demonstrate that Randwick Park is comprised of people who care for one another, and who take pride in the place that they call home."
The march, organised by local resident Lenny Bloksberg, was to show a symbol of unity and friendship following Mr Singh's death.
But Manurewa ward Manukau City Councillor Colleen Brown said it also showed life, love and traditional Kiwi neighbourhood values were strong in a suburb which had pulled its burglary rate back 30 per cent in the past year.
The people were out on the street to say to the country, "understand us, we're a real community, we're a loving community".
"The majority of these people get up every day, they take their kids to school, they go to work and they come home. The community just hates what has happened here, but they were there to say 'We're better than that'."
The money raised will go to a trust, which has been set up by the New Zealand Sikh Society to support Navtej Singh's widow and family.
