One of South Sudan’s leading human rights groups has called on the government to reveal what it knows about the December murder of newspaper columnist Isaiah Diing Abraham.

The South Sudan Human Rights Society for Advocacy says the government will be accused of having a hand in Diing’s death if his killers are not brought to justice.

Biel Boutros from the Society for Advocacy says the government claimed in January that some suspects had been arrested, but since then there has been no news at all:

“The public has been waiting for long from December 5^th.  Let them bring those people to justice. And if they are not there, if there are no suspects, because you cannot claim to have suspects without identity, there must be identities of the suspects then arrested then taken to court. Let them take them to court, and then they try to research and if they are found guilty then they have to face the law.”

The newspaper opinion writer was shot dead at his home in Juba.

Mr. Diing was, in his writings, critical of the way the government of South Sudan was tackling national affairs, particularly the outstanding post-independence issues.