The Free Tibet organisation rebuked China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, at the weekend after he said life was better now for Tibetans than it had ever been.

More than 40 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in recent months to protest at China’s occupation of Tibet, said Free Tibet’s director, Stephanie Brigden.

“They have undertaken this extraordinary act because they have been denied any other avenue – political or legal – to express their rejection of Chinese rule,” she said in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph newspaper on Saturday.

China “violates Tibetan rights daily,” the letter says, using lethal force to suppress protests and practising torture and “disappearances” as a matter of routine.

The letter follows an article by the ambassador on the same newspaper’s website which said Tibet has made “historic progress in economic and social development” adding: “Tibetan culture is well preserved.”

But “any preservation of Tibetan culture by China is cosmetic,” says Brigden.

“The regime works to eradicate a distinct Tibetan identity – seen as a threat to the Chinese state – and to enforce loyalty to ‘one China’,”  the letter ends.