South Sudan media blackout

South Sudanese journalists walked off the job at midday on Friday in a news blackout to demand that the authorities launch a thorough investigation into the killing of a newspaper journalist on Wednesday.

Peter Julius Moi was shot twice in the back by an unknown gunman in what appeared to be a targeted killing, as the perpetrator stole neither his telephone nor the cash that he was carrying.

"This was an intentional killing," Oliver Modi, the chairman of the Union of Journalists of South Sudan said.

"Today it is Peter, tomorrow is someone else," Modi added. "We are being taken one by one."

Presidential 'threat'

Moi was the seventh journalist killed this year in the war-torn country, and his death came just days after President Salva Kiir was reported to have issued a threat to reporters who reported "against the country."

"If anybody among them (journalists) does not know that this country has killed people, we will demonstrate it one day, one time," Kiir was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Moi's killing has been condemned both by the New-York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa.

The international press freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF) lists South Sudan as the 125th worst nation out of 180 to be a journalist.

"It is absolutely criminal for a president to threaten his country's journalists with death," a statement released by RSF said. "Certain words can kill, especially when uttered by a president."

South Sudan has been in a state of civil war since late 2013 when Presdient Kiir accused Riek Machar, his former deputy of plotting a coup against him. This set off a cycle of retaliatory killings that has split the country along ethnic lines.

President Kiir has so far not signed a peace accord meant to end the fighting, but was quoted as telling US Secretary of State John Kerry that he intended to do so next month.

pfd/kms (AP, AFP, dpa)