Staff Correspondent

State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Mohammad Arafat has defended the government’s handling of mass protests, as United Nations experts called for an independent investigation into the government’s 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 country’s quota system.

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, reads the Al Jazeera report.

In his interview with Talk to Al Jazeera, State Minister Arafat denounced the protesters for storming the headquarters of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television (BTV) in the capital, Dhaka.

He said policemen guarding the building were outnumbered, and “because they were not permitted to open fire … those miscreants went inside the BTV, literally invaded, and set fire and started vandalising and destroying all the assets”.

Arafat said the government has yet to determine an official death toll from the unrest.

“When it comes to the casualties, injuries, and deaths, we’re not willing to discriminate between the police and general people, or the protesters, or the people from the supporters of the government,” he said.

Arafat also told Al Jazeera that an independent judicial committee would ensure a thorough investigation into what happened, “so that everyone responsible for any of these casualties can be brought to book.”

Meanwhile, on Thursday, United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Turk called for “an impartial, independent and transparent investigation into all alleged human rights violations” that occurred during the crackdown.