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The Portuguese Settlement (Saint John's Village; Kristang: Padri sa Chang; ; ) is a neighbourhood in Ujong Pasir,
Malacca City Malacca City ( or ') is the List of capitals in Malaysia, capital city of the Malaysian state of Malacca, in Melaka Tengah District. It is List of cities by time of continuous habitation, the oldest Malaysian city on the Straits of Malacca, hav ...
, which serves as a home for the Kristang or Portuguese-Eurasian people of Malacca. The Kristang people are a Malaysian ethnic group with mixed Portuguese and Malay heritage. The community traces their Portuguese descent to the time of the Portuguese rule of Malacca (1511-1641). As of 2021, the Portuguese Settlement is estimated to have a population of approximately 1,000 inhabitants.


Founding of the Settlement

The Portuguese Settlement's foundation stone was originally laid in 1926, when the French and Portuguese missionaries Rev J Pier François and Rev A M Coroado decided to build a new settlement in the Ujong Pasir area of Malacca, to accommodate the local Portuguese Eurasian community. They viewed the settlement as a necessity for the welfare of Malacca's scattered and impoverished Portuguese people. The Settlement's seaside location was also of particular importance, given that most of the Portuguese were fishermen and required homes with access to the beach. In order to amass funding for the construction of the settlement, Rev François wrote to various prominent members of the Eurasian community in Singapore for aid; among them Dr Noel Leicester Clarke and Claude Henry da Silva:
''Your brother Raymond and Mr. Dr. Theseira on their return from Singapore consulted me about appealing to the Eurasian Community of Singapore for the poor Portuguese people of Melaka for aid to build their homes on the Portuguese Settlement. These people are really very poor and without any help from outsiders they certainly cannot build and the consequences will be, I am afraid, that the Government might take back the land.''
After negotiations with the Eurasian community of Singapore and the State Government of Malacca, 28 hectares of remote swampland in Ujong Pasir were purchased. The original design of the Settlement provided for 168 homes to be built for the Portuguese.


Freehold Status Dispute

While the Portuguese Settlement was originally granted freehold land status, this was taken from the Portuguese in 1949 by the British colonial government, owing to the construction of SMK Canossa Convent along Jalan Eradia. As the French mission behind the school was construed as a foreign entity, they were prevented from owning freehold land by the British administration in colonial Malaya. Hence, to resolve this discrepancy, the entire Portuguese Settlement lot was re-gazetted from freehold to state-owned land by the British in 1949. Since 1949, the Portuguese community has tried numerous times to regain the Settlement's freehold land status, but to no avail.


Land Reclamation Issues

In 2014, Malaysia's then-Prime Minister
Najib Razak Mohammad Najib bin Abdul Razak (, ; born 23 July 1953) is a Malaysian politician who served as the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia from 2009 to 2018. In 2020, he was convicted of corruption in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal, on ...
announced the Melaka Gateway project, which would involve extensive land reclamation efforts off the coast of the Malacca Straits. The objective of this project was to bring, among other things, a new cruise terminal and deep-water port to the city. However, this project was opposed by the residents of the Portuguese Settlements. The Portuguese claimed that the land reclamation works would have an adverse effect on the shoreline and habitat diversity of the waters off the coast of the Settlement, which would in turn pose a threat to their "main source of livelihood".


Protests Against the Melaka Gateway Project

Consequently, in 2018, the Portuguese Settlement's residents staged a protest against the master developers of the Melaka Gateway project, KAJ Development Sdn Bhd. An estimated 200 Portuguese residents brought coffins to the main office of KAJ Development, where several of them laid in the coffins whilst the others sprinkled sand onto them. In an interview with ''The Edge,'' residents of the Settlement also described the Melaka Gateway project as "the developer throwing sand into their rice bowls with the reclamation activities". Nonetheless, despite their efforts in appealing to both the State Government and the developers, the Portuguese have remained unsuccessful in thwarting the continuation of the Melaka Gateway project.


Landmarks


Christ the Redeemer Replica Statue

In 2017, the Portuguese managed to construct a new Christ the Redeemer statue at the entrance of the Portuguese Square along Jalan D'Albuquerque. It is an eight-meter tall replica of the similarly-named Art Deco statue in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the sixth-most-populous city in the Americas. Founded in 1565 by the Portuguese, the city wa ...
. The statue is intended not only to signal the Kristang community's membership of the global
Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
faith, but also their "affiliation to the Portuguese-speaking world of the global south".


Portuguese Square

The Portuguese Square ( Malay: ''Medan Portugis'') was opened by then-Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad Mahathir bin Mohamad (; ; born 10 July 1925) is a Malaysian politician, author and doctor who was respectively the fourth and seventh Prime Minister of Malaysia, prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 and from 2018 to 2020. He was the ...
on 24 January 1985, as part of the recently launched twin-city tourism development program between
Malacca Malacca (), officially the Historic State of Malacca (), is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state in Malaysia located in the Peninsular Malaysia#Other features, southern region of the Malay Peninsula, facing the Strait of Malacca ...
and
Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...
. The launch of the Portuguese Square enabled the residents to open restaurants selling traditional Portuguese food. Common Portuguese dishes that can be found here include Portuguese Baked Fish and Curry Debal.


Road Names

Roads in the Portuguese Settlement bear the names of Portuguese families such as D'Albuquerque, Teixeira and D'Aranjo, among others. These are intended as a reference to the forefathers of the present-day community, as well as the missionaries who founded the Settlement.


Attractions and Festivals

Like many other Portuguese-speaking communities around the world, the Portuguese Settlement holds a yearly "June festival" that opens with ''Festa de San Juang'' ("Feast of Saint John", June 23) and closes with ''Festa de San Pedro'' ("Feast of
Saint Peter Saint Peter (born Shimon Bar Yonah; 1 BC – AD 64/68), also known as Peter the Apostle, Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, or Cephas, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and one of the first leaders of the Jewish Christian#Jerusalem ekklēsia, e ...
", the fishermen's
patron saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...
, June 29). This festival is attended by about 100,000 visitors from Malaysia and abroad. At the festival one can hear Kristang folk songs and watch dancers in colourful costumes perform to the rhythm of branyu music. An important event in the festival is the blessing of the local fishermen's boats, specially decorated for the occasion, to assure good catch.


References


External links


Chapter 7 - The Luso-Asiatic Communities

Malacca's Portuguese community : Rocking along the Sand's Edge
Ethnic enclaves in Malaysia Kristang people Geography of Malacca Portuguese neighborhoods Portuguese Malacca Tourist attractions in Malacca {{malacca-geo-stub