Mourners held a silent vigil on Friday night for Natalina Angok, the young African-Australian woman found dead in Melbourne’s Chinatown on Wednesday.

A small group gathered on the steps of the Victorian parliament on Spring Street for about an hour on Friday evening, vowing to “gather to bear witness to Natalina Angok’s life”.

Anti-violence campaigners said on Friday they hoped to “come together in our grief and anger” and to “say her name”. A second vigil is planned for Sunday.

“There’s a reason we’re on the steps of parliament and it’s because it’s place where change can happen,” Jessamy Gleeson, of the We Keep Vigil group, told Guardian Australia.

“We consider each woman’s death to not be inevitable and we don’t accept that it will keep happening. We make sure that their lives are honoured, not as a statistic. To her friends and her family and people that knew her, Natalina was important.”

Earlier, Angok’s family said they were heartbroken by her death.

Angok, 32, from Geelong, was allegedly killed by her boyfriend Christopher Allen Bell, who appeared in court for the second time on Friday.

“We are heartbroken,” the Angok family said in a statement.

“Our family is finding the strength to come to terms with this tragedy and the loss of Natalina Angok.”

The vigil was held amid concern over the relatively muted public reaction to her death.

Thousands of Melburnians previously attended vigils following the alleged rape and murder of comedian Eurydice Dixon last year.

And there was an outpouring of grief and flower tributes for Aiia Maasarwe, who was killed walking home from a tram stop in Bundoora in January.

The lawyer Maker Mayek said on Twitter that Angok was “well known in the South Sudanese community” in Melbourne.

Botswana-born African-Australian Sharon Orapeleng said she was outraged at the lack of attention given to Angok’s death: “Her body found on the streets of Melbourne … no vigils … hardly getting any mention [in] the press. I am outraged … her name is Natalina Angok … she is not just a number! Say her name!”

There were no floral tributes in the laneway where Angok died on Friday morning, according to a local restauranteur who said police no longer have the area cordoned off.

We Keep Vigil organiser Karen Pickering earlier said she hoped for a strong turnout but feared numbers could be down compared with previous events.

The group holds a vigil for every woman lost to alleged male violence in Australia and waits until names of victims are released and circumstances are publicly confirmed before it organises the events. The vigil for Angok is the 21st this year.

“If she was a young white woman [killed] in the city I think there might be a different response,” Pickering told the Guardian.

Orapeleng acknowledged that the Anzac Day public holiday might have been a factor in delaying reaction, but believed the victim’s skin colour and ethnicity may have also played a part.

She said there had been an “us against them” narrative carried by some media outlets about African-Australians and a strong focus on people from that community as perpetrators of violence.

“When you are an African and you are the victim it becomes harder for people to emotionally connect with,” Orapeleng told Guardian Australia.

“We must treat Natalina the same as any other woman who has died by domestic violence or violence perpetrated by a man. Let’s stand and say this is not right.”

Orapeleng also contrasted the community responses to the deaths of Dixon and Maasarwe with what she says was a muted reaction to the death of 19-year-old South Sudanese-Australian Laa Chol during a brawl at a Melbourne CBD unit in July last year.

People of #Melbourne and surrounds, here’s a serious question...



Where are the vigils for Natalina Angok? We saw vigils for Eurydice Dixon in June 2018. We saw vigils for Aya Masarwe in January this year. Where are the vigils for Natalina?#vicpol https://t.co/W4UXzlzBJX — James Hearnes (@jams_thoms) April 25, 2019

Bell faced court charged with her murder on Thursday and returned on Friday for a brief hearing.

He said nothing during the hearing, as magistrate Duncan Reynolds ordered he remain in custody to face a committal mention on 30 August.

“They were dating, in a relationship. That was her boyfriend,” Angok’s sister Helena told the Age, saying they had been together for more than a year.

The court was told on Thursday he was released from a mental inpatient facility “only a week ago” and required treatment for schizophrenia. Police are yet to reveal how Angok died.

Angok’s family was in shock, her sister said.

“She didn’t deserve to die,” she said. “She was a loving and caring sister, and a down-to-earth person, not a troublemaker. She loved everybody.”

Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day via the national domestic violence counselling and information support service 1800Respect(1800 737 732).

Australian Associated Press contributed to this report.

• This article was amended on 27 April 2019 to correct the spelling of Natalina Angok’s name in the subheading.