THERE are growing fears China is executing muslim prisoners so they can harvest their organs to treat dying coronavirus patients.

The concerns come after Beijing boasted it had performed a successful double transplant op on a patient given just days to live.

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2 Beijing boasted it had performed a successful double transplant op on a coronavirus patient (stock) Credit: Getty Images - Getty

Now human right monitors are asking how the two matching lungs needed for the 59-year-old's life-saving surgery were found so quickly.

The campaigning magazine Bitter Winter writes: "The fact that two matching lungs were found in a few days raises new suspicions of organ harvesting.

"The patient, who on February 24th, was given days to live...had only to wait a matter of five days before a perfectly matching, 'consenting', brain-dead donor could be found.

"Whilst around the world waiting times for a single lung from a suitable donor could be years, China has shown this week that it need only be days, for two perfectly matched lungs to be rustled up."

Reports of the life-saving operation were big news in China and made the front pages of many state-backed papers.

However, one investigative journalist has now claimed there are fears detained Uyghur muslims were "being used as a kill-on-demand emergency backstop for Chinese coronavirus patients".

CJ Werleman wrote: "The fact that the patient had to wait a mere five days for a 'consenting' donor to provide a perfect matching set of lungs, raises further questions about the scale and scope of the country's illegal forced organ harvesting programme."

In 2014 China vowed it would no longer remove organs for transplantation from executed prisoners but some observers fear they may have never stopped.

2 State prisoners used to account for two-thirds of transplant organs in China Credit: AP:Associated Press

At the time it was estimated inmates accounted for two-thirds of all transplant organs.

The revelations of the new transplant op are also particularly suspicious as only one in every two million citizens in China is reportedly a donor.

It's not the first time China has been accused of harvesting organs from state detainees.