Cuban opposition figure arrested a day before banned protest

Guillermo Farinas - a Cuban opposition figure and freelance journalist, was captured on Friday. His mother said her son is a dissident, journalist and human rights activist who was taken into custody by two policemen.

His arrest on Friday comes three days before opposition figures plan to hold a protest that has been banned by the government.

"They arrested him today. They caught him at 14:10 [19:10 GMT]," Farinas mother Alicia Hernandez told the AFP news agency.

She said her son is on antibiotics due to a urinary tract infection (UTI).

"An ambulance and two police officials came and took him to Arnaldo Milian Castro Hospital," Hernandez said.

"They stated that tomorrow a prosecutor will meet him to prosecute him, but we do not know why."

Farinas, 59, is a psychologist by profession and has worked as a freelance journalist and human rights activist. In 2010 he won the Sakharow Prize for Freedom of Thought of the European Parliament.

In the last 20 years or so, Farinas has carried out 23 hunger strikes to protest against the Cuban government, which has significantly damaged his health and well-being. Farinas is an active member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, the very active political opposition group in the Caribbean communist country.

Farinas' arrest comes ahead of a planned opposition rally Monday to demand the release of political prisoners in Cuba.

The meeting was banned by the island's communist government, but organizers planned to continue anyway.

Government authorities claim that Washington's protest organizers are seeking to provoke a change in government. President Miguel Diaz-Canel stated his followers were "ready to preserve the revolution" in the face of "an imperial policy" (by the United States).

"We are calm, confident in ourselves, but attentive and alert, and we are also ready to defend the revolution in order to confront any intervention action against our country," Diaz-Canel said in a televised speech on Friday.

"We are a revolution open to talk, to debate," he stated, "but we are a society closed to force, closed to force and closed to foreign intervention."

Cuban authorities who reject the presence of political detainees in the country consider the opposition illegitimate and claim that it is funded by the United States.

Endless national street protests shook Cuba in July as people took to the streets shouting "freedom" and "we are hungry".

The protesters killed one person, injured dozens and arrested 1,175. Half are still in prison, says the human rights group Cubalex.

The chief organizer of the march on Monday, Yunior Garcia, said on Friday that the authorities had cautioned him that he would be captured if he proceeded with plans to march alone the day before.

"They even told me in what prison they would take me," Garcia told AFP, insisting he would go on his only protest march anyway.