Chinese authorities hid a tortured political prisoner in a coronavirus quarantine facility to cover-up signs of abuse and to stop him seeing his family, according to an activist website.

News of the alleged abuse and suspected subsequent cover-up was reported on Minghui.org, a website that highlights abuses of followers of Falon Gong, a Chinese religious practice that has been subject to persecution from authorities.

Gong Fengqiang, 48, was allegedly hurled into a coronavirus quarantine facility on January 27 near Yilan County, Heilongjiang Province, after passing out from the abuse sustained in his torture chamber at a nearby detention facility.

48-year-old Gong Fengqiang was allegedly taken to a quarantine room for coronavirus patients after he lost consciousness from being abused in a detention center for practicing Falun Gong in Yilan County, China

More than 42,000 people have contracted the new strain of coronavirus — now named as COVID-19 — which originated in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China, and there have been more than 1,000 deaths. After the outbreak, China has erected a series of new hospitals, hoping to isolate and treat patient of the virus.

However, Minghui.org, alleges that some coronavirus quarantine centres are being used to cover-up the abuses against political prisoners.

The site claims that Gong and his late wife, Li Yanjie, were repeatedly arrested and tortured over a 20-year period for failing to renounce their faith.

Yanjie died less than a month before Gong's arrest, the site claims. Chinese authorities allegedly chased her and she fell to her death trying to get away.

The report adds that Gong was first jailed in 2001 for two years, then in 2007 for five. He reportedly suffered a mental break down after being tortured in custody.

Gong's wife, Li Yanjie, is said to have died a month earlier after Chinese authorities chased her and she fell to her death while evading arrest in Yilan County, China

An undated photo shows shackles on a person at a Chinese labor camp from footage

Among the torture, the site claims Gong was force-fed, beaten and denied use of the toilet at the prison.

According to the site, this caused significant health problems once he was released in 2008, including amnesia and an inability to look after himself.

Around 2,000 Falun Gong members have died in custody since 1999, the Guardian reported supporters outside the country having said.

The UN reported that they are disproportionately tortured in detention centres in China.

Chinese authorities have classed the movement as a cult, despite no proven plans for violence or illegal activity.

An undated photo shows an image of the Jilin women’s labor camp (shown), where members of the Falun Gong have been held in the past

A 2019 report found that followers of Falun Gong, were 'certainly' among those used as a source for 'forced organ harvesting' in recent decades.

Persecution of the Falun Gong began in 1999 after it had attracted tens of millions of followers and came to be seen as a threat to the communist party.

Former Falun Gong inmates gave testimonies of undergoing repeated blood tests and organ scans in Chinese jails. Some claimed that several inmates had disappeared after being tested.

Jennifer Zeng, 52, a Falun Gong follower, said she was imprisoned for a year. She said she was held against her will, physically and mentally tortured, and kept in cramped conditions in a labour camp in 2000.

'On the day we were transferred to the labour camp, we were taken to a medical facility where we underwent physical check-ups. We were interrogated about what diseases we had and I told them I had hepatitis C,' she told the Guardian.

'The second time, after about a month in the camp, everyone was handcuffed and put in a van and taken to a huge hospital. That was for a more thorough physical check-up. We were given X-rays. On the third occasion in the camp, they were drawing blood from us. We were all told to line up in the corridor and the test were given,' she added. She fled China in 2001.

It noted that the persecution has been lucrative for some communist officials, through extortion, slave labor, and forced organ harvesting. Independent investigators, in a report last year, confirmed a vast state-run system of hospitals used in organ harvesting. While it’s unclear exactly how many Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs, the report estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 transplants are performed each year. Because of the inefficiency of China’s organ transplantation system, the investigators believe in most instances one organ transplanted means one victim killed.

The Minghui report also comes as officials at several crematoriums in the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan, China, told The Epoch Times that their intake has skyrocketed in recent weeks, suggesting that more people are dying of the disease than officially reported.

The new coronavirus is in the same family of pathogens as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which caused hundreds of deaths in China in 2003, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has killed more than 500 worldwide since 2012.