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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Indonesia president makes concessions after days of deadly protests
forced him to scrap China summit trip
Story by Reuters
Updated:
10:48 PM EDT, Sun August 31, 2025
Source: Reuters
Indonesian political parties have agreed to cut lawmakers’ benefits,
President Prabowo Subianto said on Sunday, in a bid to calm
anti-government protests that have killed at least five people in the
country’s worst violence in decades.
Protests began on Monday over what demonstrators called excessive pay
and housing allowances for parliamentarians, escalating into riots on
Friday after a motorcycle rideshare driver was killed during police
action at a protest site.
Homes of political party members and state buildings were ransacked or
set ablaze, shaking investor confidence in the Southeast Asian economy
and triggering a steep selloff on its stocks and currency markets on
Friday.
Looters broke into a house owned by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani
Indrawati outside the capital Jakarta overnight, state news agency
Antara reported on Sunday. She was not in the house at the time and it
was not clear if she uses the property often.
More protests are planned for Monday, and student groups did not call
them off after Prabowo’s announcement.
Prabowo, speaking at a press conference at the Presidential Palace and
flanked by the leaders of various political parties, said he had
ordered the military and police to take stern action against rioters
and looters. He said some of the unrest bore the signs of terrorism and
treason.
“Leaders in parliament have conveyed that they will revoke a number
of parliament policies, including the size of allowances for members of
parliament and a moratorium on overseas work trips,” Prabowo said.
“To the police and the military, I have ordered them to take action
as firm as possible against the destruction of public facilities,
looting at homes of individuals and economic centers, according to the
laws,” he added.
Challenge to Prabowo
The protests represent the most significant challenge yet to
Prabowo’s government, which has faced little political opposition
since taking office nearly a year ago.
Prabowo, who canceled a high-profile trip to China due to the unrest,
also met on Sunday with key members of his cabinet at the Presidential
Palace to discuss the situation.
Many ministers and political leaders arriving at the palace used
civilian number plates instead of special ones given to officials, a
witness said, in an apparent security measure as unrest simmered in
some places.
The military was deployed to guard the palace on top of the usual
secret service detail. Many key ministers’ homes and government
installations were also being guarded by the military on Sunday.
It remains unclear who is behind the rioting and looting that followed
the protests, which were initially organized by student associations.
Muzammil Ihsan, head of the All Indonesian Students’ Executives Body,
the country’s largest student umbrella group, told Reuters cutting
lawmakers’ perks was “not enough” and said further demonstrations
were being “considered.”
“The government must resolve deep-rooted problems. The anger on the
streets is not without cause,” Ihsan said.
Tegar Afriansyah, the chairman of a smaller student group, Indonesian
Student League for Democracy, which has been protesting since Monday,
said the presidential announcement does not address the root of the
problem, which is “political oligarchy and an unequal economic
structure.”
He termed Prabowo’s instructions to police and military as “clearly
repressive and intimidating.”
Global rights watchdog Amnesty International’s Indonesia chapter in a
statement termed Prabowo’s use of terms such as treason and terrorism
as “excessive.”
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, said it had suspended its live
feature in Indonesia for a few days.
The death toll rose to five on Sunday, according to the local disaster
management agency in Makassar, South Sulawesi province. It said an
online motorcycle taxi driver was beaten to death by a mob accusing him
of being an intelligence agent.
in an arson attack on the local parliament building on Friday.
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