From Jakarta to Macau

Denize Murni: “It is easy to live here.”

Denize Murni is the vice-president of the Macau Local Indonesians Association (MLIA), the most recent Indonesian association formed in the territory. This Jakarta-born woman has lived in Macau for almost 10 years. She is a Macau ID holder and regards the city as her home.
“I have Chinese blood and I’m Christian,” she told the Macau Daily Times. Denize and her husband left her country in the year 2000. “He got a job here,” she said.
After almost one decade living in Macau this housewife already feels at home. “It is easy to live here.”
“I feel at home, because I don’t have any problems here. It’s only a little bit difficult to find those special things, mainly in the health sector,” she added.
Denize regards the MLIA’s vice-president duty as a new challenge. It is a sort of mission. “I liked the idea. I’m part of Indonesia and Macau, so I thought I could do better by helping in the relationship between both sides,” she explained.
As a resident, she feels like a real local, although she thinks people still regard the migrant communities as outsiders. A very normal situation, Denize pointed out, that happens in every other place in the world.
“The Government benefits all Macau residents in the same way. But if we talk about Indonesians in general, migrants included, I would say: Yes, there is discrimination. I think it doesn’t happen only with Indonesians but also with other communities, like Filipino or Thai. People think we are only entitled to be helpers or menial workers just because we are Indonesian or Filipino.”