* Government says police officers acting alone
* Promises media law before independence
JUBA, Sudan, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Armed south Sudanese police raided an independent newspaper, its editor said on Tuesday, raising fears of a crackdown on press freedom ahead of the region's declaration of independence in July.
The south voted overwhelmingly last month to secede from the north, but southerners have found the transition from civil war to self-government difficult, and rights abuses and violence remain a daily reality for many of the 8 million population.
Nhial Bol, editor-in-chief of the Citizen, said the newspaper's offices were raided early on Sunday by five policemen wearing civilian clothing, waving pistols and criticising the paper's content.
"They were carrying pistols ... they were yelling that we were writing nonsense," Bol said. "They were from a branch of the police, I recognised one of them from a function I attended."
Bol said he thought the raid was in retaliation for a recent article he wrote saying that the south's police force was a cause of insecurity and lacked good leadership.
He said interior ministry officials had told him to stop criticising the police in print.
Southern media leaders hope press freedom will be better protected when a media bill now awaiting parliamentary approval becomes law.
"We don't have a law so police do not know what they can do ... they terrorise whoever they want," Bol said. "They are refusing to investigate the officers who (carried out the raid) ... The media law may help in situations like this."
The south's information minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, said "This was an isolated incident by the police ..." of which the internal affairs ministry knew nothing.
Protecting freedom of expression for media outlets is at the heart of government media policy, and the new media law will be passed before independence, Benjamin said.
"It is not the journalists alone who are dying to have (this law), we as a government also need it because we need a legal environment ... for a democratic new state to function."
Journalists say a dispute over part of the law restricting investigations into government corruption had delayed its passage.
South Sudan has a patchy record on protecting media freedom. Journalists have reported being harassed or detained during 2010 elections and at other times of political tension.
The south's independence referendum was the result of a peace agreement in 2005 that ended decades of north-south civil war. Fought over differences in ethnicity, religion, ideology and oil, it claimed the lives of at least two million people. (Reporting by Jeremy Clarke; editing by Opheera McDoom and Tim Pearce)
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