Two years ago the people of South Sudan voted overwhelmingly for independence amid a fanfare of celebrations and optimism.

A few months later, global applause greeted the birth of the world's newest country.

For 20 years Sudan had been ripped apart by bloody civil war and finally it seemed a new, peaceful and democratic future had arrived for its long-suffering people.

 

But now it seems to many those hopes have been betrayed, they say those ideals have been discarded by elements within an increasingly autocratic government.

Local journalists and human rights activists are being arbitrarily arrested, beaten or killed, and foreign aid workers threatened, censored and spied on.

The Today programme's foreign affairs correspondent Mike Thomson report from South Sudan's capital, Juba.