Cuban Dissident Says under House Arrest

Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas said Sunday he has been placed under house arrest to keep him from taking part in an opposition forum on the sidelines of a Latin American summit.

"Today is the third day they won't let me go out," Farinas told Agence France Presse by telephone from his home in Santa Clara, 280 kilometers east of Havana.

"There is a police operative who stays a block away from my house during the day but is in front of it at night," he said.

A 52-year-old psychologist who was awarded the European parliament's Sakharov prize in 2010, Farinas is a veteran of hunger strikes against political conditions on the communist-ruled island.

He said he had planned to take part in a "democratic forum about international relations and human rights" that Cuban dissidents have called for Tuesday in Havana.

The meeting is timed to coincide with the opening in Havana of a two-day summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders.

Another dissident who planned to attend the forum, Jose Daniel Ferrer, was arrested on Friday after meeting with European diplomats, another rights activist, Elizardo Sanchez, said.

"Until now, he is technically disappeared. No one knows where he is," said Sanchez, the leader of the outlawed Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Sanchez said dozens of dissidents have been placed under house arrest in what he called a "wave of political repression" ahead of the summit.