Bangladesh minister defends gov’t response to protests amid calls for probe

Mohammad Arafat tells Al Jazeera authorities tried to ‘de-escalate’ tensions as UN officials urge probe into crackdown.

Bangladesh’s minister of state for information and broadcasting has defended the government’s handling of mass protests, as United Nations experts called for an independent investigation into the government’s deadly crackdown on demonstrators.

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday, Mohammad Arafat said the country’s security forces had done everything “to bring back the peace” amid the student protests.

He accused “third-party” actors, including “extremists and terrorists”, of fuelling the unrest.

“We’re not referring to the students [as] the terrorists and anarchists. It is the third party, those who intruded into this movement and started doing all this,” Arafat said on Talk to Al Jazeera.

“We tried our best to de-escalate the tension,” he said, adding that “some people are trying to add fuel to the fire, are trying to create a situation where they can take advantage … and topple the government”.

Thousands of Bangladeshi students took to the streets earlier this month to demand reforms to the South Asian country’s quota system, which allocates 30 percent of government jobs to the descendants of veterans who fought for Bangladesh in the 1971 war.

More than 150 student protesters have been killed and thousands have been arrested in the crackdown on the demonstrations, according to local media, fuelling tensions across the nation of more than 170 million people.

The protests turned violent on July 15 after members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) – the student wing of the country’s ruling party – allegedly attacked the protesters.

Police then cracked down on the demonstrations and