The US, the UK and the EU protested a decision by a Chinese court to uphold the 11-year prison sentence for Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), a political dissident convicted last year on subversion charges after promoting a manifesto calling for China to become a democracy.

“We are disappointed by the Chinese government’s decision to uphold Liu Xiaobo’s sentence of 11 years in prison on the charge of ‘inciting subversion of state power,’” US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman said in a statement yesterday. “We believe that he should not have been sentenced in the first place and should be released immediately.”