Chinese Human Rights Dissident Loses ‘Subversion’ Appeal
Feb. 11th, 2010
China’s leading dissident, Liu Xiaobo, yesterday lost his appeal against his conviction and 11-year sentence for inciting subversion.
Outside the court, US and European diplomats called for the immediate release of the 54-year-old Liu, a writer and one-time professor who was first detained in December 2008 after co-authoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China.
US ambassador Jon Huntsman said in a statement after the ruling that Washington was “disappointed” and lamented what he called the “persecution” of citizens expressing their political views.
Liu had been jailed before over the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests.
Last month, four retired Communist Party officials signed an open letter to the government calling for a review of Liu’s case. They suggested his conviction violated some of the principles for which they had fought.
“His harsh sentence is a stark reminder to the Chinese people and the world that there is still no freedom of expression or independent judiciary in China,” says Roseann Rife, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Amnesty International.









