Cubans detain dozens of protesters honoring late dissident

MIAMI — Cuban security officials expanded a clampdown on dissidents today, detaining dozens, putting others under house arrest and threatening still others in a bid to avert street protests marking the anniversary of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s death.

Only 12 relatives of the political prisoner made it to his grave in the eastern town of Banes to pray for Zapata Tamayo, who died Feb. 23 2010, after a lengthy hunger strike to protest prison beatings and other abuses.

“We managed to get to the cemetery despite a big police deployment,” his mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, told El Nuevo Herald. “We prayed, put flowers, observed a minute of silence and shouted ‘Zapata Lives!”’

Tamayo said she was pleased but surprised her group was allowed to walk to the grave, because of the flurry of reports from elsewhere in Cuba about security officials’ efforts to prevent other ceremonies marking her son’s death.

Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz said he had confirmed reports of about 45 dissidents detained and nearly 60 confined to their homes in what he called “a wave of preventive repression.”

Cuban security officials regularly detain dissidents to keep them from attending opposition gatherings, and release them hours or days later. It was not clear how many of those reported detained over recent days remained in jail today.