Key points:
- Student groups demand deeper reforms beyond perks cut
- 20 people missing after deadly clashes
- Stock index hit by protests
ISLAMABAD: Indonesian political parties have agreed to cut lawmakers’ benefits, President Prabowo Subianto said, in a bid to calm anti-government protests that have killed at least five people in the country’s worst violence in decades.
According to Reuters news agency, protests began early last week over what demonstrators called excessive pay and housing allowances for parliamentarians, escalating into riots at the weekend after a motorcycle rideshare driver was killed during police action at a protest site.
A rights group said on Tuesday that at least 20 people were missing after the violent protests.
Six people killed
At least six people have been killed since protests rocked Southeast Asia’s biggest economy last week, intensified by the footage spreading of the killing of the young delivery driver by a paramilitary police unit.
“As of September 1, there were 23 reports of missing persons. After the search and verification process, 20 missing persons remain unfound,” the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) said in a statement.
The group said the 20 were reported missing in the cities of Bandung and Depok on Java island, and the administrative cities of Central Jakarta, East Jakarta and North Jakarta that make up the wider capital city.
One incident took place in an “unknown location”, it said.
1,240 arrested
Police arrested 1,240 people in protests in Jakarta since August 25, the city’s Metropolitan Police Inspector General Asep Edi Suheri told reporters, state news agency Antara reported.
The unrest emerged in cities across the country, forcing President Prabowo Subianto into a U-turn on lawmaker perks.
They were the worst protests since the ex-general took power last year.
More protests were expected on Tuesday at parliament in Jakarta by a coalition of women’s groups, who a day earlier cancelled their protest.
The United Nations has called for an investigation into alleged use of disproportionate force in the protests.
Clashes near university
The military was deployed across capital Jakarta on Monday as hundreds gathered again outside parliament and clashes were reported in several other cities.
Prabowo criticized protesters as he paid a visit to injured police at a hospital and said rallies should end by sundown.
In Bandung, protesters hurled Molotov cocktails at a provincial council building, before police overnight fired tear gas at “suspected… anarchists” who blocked a road.
Officers clashed with protesters who police accused of trying to draw them into a student campus at the Bandung Islamic University and “instigate conflict”, Hendra Rochman, West Java police spokesman said in a statement Tuesday.
Indonesia’s stock market was also hit by the protest.
