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.

Liu, a scholar and literary critic, was charged with “incitement to subversion” because he coauthored Charter 08, a petition for political freedom and an end to the ruling Communist party’s monopoly of power. The online petition has garnered thousands of signatures since it was released just over a year ago.

His wife, Liu Xia, was given rare permission to attend yesterday’s brief court hearing, after being barred from the trial itself.

She told The Australian this week: “History will prove that Xiaobo is right.”

In his appeal, his lawyers said the court “lacked the commonsense” to distinguish between the government and ruling party, which Liu had criticised, and the state — which he did not attack.

They also pointed to abuse of process — including Liu’s detention in solitary confinement in a small, windowless cell rather than in his home as required by law.

Charter 08 was originally signed by 303 people from a cross-section of China — intellectuals, editors, lawyers, artists and people who described themselves as peasants and workers.

It then attracted a further 10,000 signatories. The ruling Communist Party was concerned that so many people had been able to communicate their support for discussion about the authority of its rule without its knowledge.

The manifesto took its name from Charter 77, a petition written in 1977 against Soviet occupation by Czech intellectuals, led by Vaclav Havel, who went on to become president for 14 years.

Mr Havel and a group of Czech politicians have nominated Liu for the Nobel Peace Prize.