Jakarta – President Prabowo Subianto on Saturday canceled a planned trip to China as days of protests spread further outside the capital Jakarta, with several regional parliament buildings set ablaze.
Prabowo had been due to attend a "Victory Day" parade in China on September 3 to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two following Japan's formal surrender.
The protests, the first major test for Prabowo's nearly year-old government, began in Jakarta this week over lawmakers' pay and worsened after a police vehicle hit and killed a motorcycle rider.
"The president wants to continue monitoring (the situation in Indonesia) directly...and seek the best solutions," presidential spokesperson Prasetyo Hadi said in a video statement on Saturday.
"Therefore, the president apologizes to the Chinese government that he could not attend the invitation."
Another consideration in cancelling the trip was a United Nations General Assembly session in September, Prasetyo said.
In the light of the protest, short-video app TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, said on Saturday it had suspended its live feature in Indonesia for a few days.
Jakarta had this week summoned representatives of social media platforms, including as Meta Platforms and TikTok, and told them to boost content moderation because disinformation had spread online. The government says that such disinformation has spurred protests against it.
Protests also occurred in Bali on Saturday, where teargas was used against protesters.
Local media also reported that a crowd had looted the Jakarta home of Ahmad Sahroni, a lawmaker from the political party NasDem, and taken items including household furniture.
Sahroni has faced accusations of responding insensitively to people calling for parliament to be dissolved amid anger over lawmakers' allowances. Sahroni has labeled such critics "the stupidest people in the world".