This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The mayors of eight Melbourne councils have condemned the media and politicians for “fearmongering” over youth crime and “African gangs”, days after a fight between South Sudanese-Australian teenagers in the city’s outer suburbs dominated headlines.

The councils – which represent 1.2 million Melburnians in the outer west, inner north and south-east of the city – joined with South Sudanese-Australian leaders on Monday morning to claim the media was overemphasising the crimes committed by the African-Australian community.

“This racist fearmongering must be stopped,” said Kim Le Cerf, the mayor of Darebin in Melbourne’s inner north.

'It’s not safe for us': South Sudanese-Australians weather 'African gangs' storm Read more

The public statement comes after a fight between two groups at Taylors Hill, in Melbourne’s outer west, over a “couple of girlfriends” was prominently reported in newspapers and led the nightly commercial news in Melbourne.

Bob Turner, the mayor of Melton which covers Taylors Hill, was among those criticising the coverage on Monday, saying people from South Sudanese backgrounds in his area felt like “everybody is attacking them”.

“There’s good and bad in every community,” he told Guardian Australia.

Police said the fight last Wednesday night was attended by about 50 teenagers, that rocks were thrown and that a police car was damaged. There were no injuries and no arrests were made on the night.

Some residents said they were frightened to leave their homes. They reported the youths shouting abuse at police. Police patrolled the streets of Taylors Hill on horseback the following day.

The incident led the nightly commercial news in Melbourne and a weekend feature story in the Australian quoted one Taylors Hill resident as saying “African Australian youths would meet at the park at the end of her street to play basket­ball, listen to music and cook food on the public barbecues”.

Maker Mayek, a South Sudanese community leader who joined the mayors on Monday, told Guardian Australia the coverage was disproportionate.

“Other than that [a rock being thrown at a police car], there wasn’t any major incident,” he said, adding that he understood residents in Taylors Hill feeling unsettled.

He conceded there was a problem with young, disenfranchised South Sudanese-Australian youths, but accused the media of fuelling further fear.

“It sells newspapers because we are talking about people who are different in terms of the way they look,” he said.

“That is part of the fearmongering ... If you put that on the front page, you’ll get the reaction you’re looking for.”

The councils represented on Monday were Darebin, Hume, Whittlesea, Moreland, Yarra, Knox, Monash and Melton.

The Victorian opposition leader, Matthew Guy, criticised the mayors for suggesting there was not a gang problem.

“It’s fine for mayors in inner-city suburbs to preach to the rest of the world about what they feel is right and wrong, but how about we get together and solve some of these crimes,” Guy said on Monday.

After the fight in Taylors Hill last week, the minister for home affairs, Peter Dutton, again said there was “a problem with African gang violence in Victoria”.

“[Residents] are worried about this activity and if they’re being told to lock themselves in their room at night, or in their house at night, or they’re, you know, they’re scared otherwise because of these activities then there’s a basic fundamental failing of the premier,” he told 3AW.

Le Cerf, who is a member of the Greens party, said people were being made to feel unwelcome “simply because they are Australian-Sudanese”.

“We cannot continue to tarnish everyone in the Australian-Sudanese community with the actions of a select few,” she said.

“No one condones violence and no one condones the actions of some of these young people.”