South Sudan’s minister of East African Affairs in the current unity government, John Luk Jok has died, a government spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.
Michael Makuei Lueth, minister of information and broadcasting, described the deceased as a liberator and scholar who helped write the country’s Constitution in 2011.
“It was this Tuesday morning when I received a telephone call and informed that brother John Luk Jok has passed on. So it is true that it has happened,” Makuei told Xinhua in Juba.
He said there was no official confirmation of the cause of the death.
“We have lost a great man who contributed a lot in a liberation struggle and after liberation. He had ever been a servant of people, and with his death, we have lost a great man,” said Makuei.
South Sudan minister John Jok dies
John Luk Jok, Former South Sudanese Minister of Justice, speaks at a joint press conference by seven of South Sudan's former political prisoners on February 13, 2014 in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa after arriving from Nairobi on the invitation of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to participate in the second phase of political talks on the South Sudan crisis. Key peace talks between South Sudan's government and rebels got under way in Ethiopia on on February 12 with regional mediators shuttling between delegates from both sides. The talks are aimed at building on a fragile ceasefire agreement that was signed in Addis Ababa on January 23 and addressing the root causes of the nearly two-month-old conflict in the world's youngest nation, which won independence from Khartoum just two and a half years ago. AFP PHOTO / SOLAN GEMECHU (Photo by SOLAN GEMECHU / AFP)