Howick & Botany Times Newspaper
MORE THAN 300 people from Asian and other ethnic groups were welcomed onto a Manurewa marae on Sunday, for a hui to promote racial harmony and safer streets.
Leading the guests onto the marae was Asian leader Peter Low, founder of the Asian Anti-Crime Group (AAG), who earlier this year was reported as threatening to bring triads to New Zealand to deal with criminals.
On Sunday he had turned away from that approach toward education and family as cornerstones of anti-crime work.
The gathering has moved race relations and anti-crime work a step forward, with some calling it an historic event.
The hosts were Te Hapu Ngai O Tupango on Sunday. The guests included Maori Party MP Pita Sharples, other members of the Asian Anti-Crime Group (AAG), along with people from about 20 Chinese, Korean and other Asian groups.
People who attended say the hui has started a new process of softening community divisions and setting the ground for further collaboration between Asian and Polynesian communities.
It gave an opportunity for the various groups to network and communicate. It was the first time that many of the Asian present had been onto a marae.
“In 21 years in New Zealand I’d never been to a marae. Now I find we have very similar values and culture,” says Mr Low. “This is only a beginning.”
Mr Low’s talk has now turned away from triads toward education and family as cornerstones for anti-crime work.
He also spoke of the Asian immigrant community needing to overcome its distance from Maori or Polynesian people and to not feel intimidated.
“We immigrants should come out of our own community and get to know others. You don’t feel fear of people if you know them.”
In an interview with TV One, Mr Sharples said the hui was a golden opportunity to embrace newer Asians.
“We invite people to the country. They come and live here and we don’t look after them.”
Mr Sharples spoke out against Mr Low’s earlier triad comments and stressed that solutions lay in building stronger communities and “giving resources to strengthen families where there are people at a loose end causing violence”.
Manukau Asian Forum chairman and Botany Community Board member Wayne Huang calls the hui an “historic event”.
“A lot of Asian people learned a lot. Before, they were isolated, now they are working together. I believe it is time for all of us to unite, no matter what ethnicity you are, to fight crime.”
Mr Huang says in 15 years he’s never seen anything like the meeting and believes it’s time people came together instead of working as individual ethnic groups.
In another healing gesture at the same marae in February, a hui was held with a number of community groups after the violent deaths of Krishna Naidu and Pihema Clifford Cameron.
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The man who threatened to bring triads to New Zealand to fight crime has revealed his softer side, during an emotional meeting today.
Peter Low and hundreds of his supporters were welcomed on to a south Auckland marae in a bid to build understanding.
About 250 south Auckland residents of Asian descent were welcomed on to Manurewa marae by Ngai Tuponga in a symbolic gesture of friendship.
“The main issue now is getting to know one another like all indigenous people that is in New Zealand now,” says Tangihaere Kingi.
Leading the visitors in was Peter Low, spokesman for the Asian Anti-crime Group (AAG).
It was Low who mobilised the anti-crime march in Botany last month that attracted more than 10,000 people.
He was also widely condemned for threatening to bring in triads if police failed to respond, but does not regret his comments.
Low admits he lost support as a result of the threats. But he says they got him the attention he wanted, particularly from local police.
“If I don't say the negative things I don't think they would take serious with the AAG,’ says Low.
Now Low says his focus is education. Emerging from the wharenui, he described the welcome as spiritual.
“The chief of the Maori people is very sincere, as to receive us as like a brother, so we got a long road to walk together hand in hand,” says Low.
Low is now considering organising another big march against crime, this time in the centre of Auckland.
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