Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has spoken out against China’s rigid control over Tibet, blaming the desperate conditions Tibetans live in for the recent spate of self-immolations that have taken place.

Speaking in Tokyo after meeting an adviser to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, the 76-year-old Nobel peace prize laureate said,

"Chinese communist propaganda creates (a) very rosy picture. But actually, including many Chinese from mainland China who visit Tibet, they all have the impression things are terrible."

"Some kind of policy, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place."

"That's why, you see, these sorts of sad incidents happen, due to the desperateness of the situation."

Beijing has responded by saying they have been raising the standards of those living in the region by providing much economic investment.

But the Tibetan people still feel repressed under Chinese rule, as a spate of 11 self immolations of monks and nuns having taken place recently. China responded by forcing monks to undergo “patriotic re-education” with many having disappeared altogether, as well as deploying thousands of armed police and locking down monasteries.

The US State Department has also condemned China’s policies in Tibet stating,

"We have... repeatedly urged the Chinese government to address its counter-productive policies in Tibetan areas that have created tensions".

Lobsang Sangay Tibet's Prime Minister-in-exile, said that,

"The monks and nuns who immolated themselves were sacrificing their bodies to draw the world's attention to Chinese repression in Tibet."

"While the leadership in exile does not encourage self-immolation, we must focus on the causes... the continuing occupation of Tibet and the Chinese policies of cultural repression, cultural assimilation, economic marginalisation and environmental destruction."

See a report on the immolations from Al Jazeera below.

China has accused the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959, as instigating the self-immolations, calling them “terrorism in disguise”.