Cuban police and pro-government mobs cracked down on dissidents across the island Wednesday to avert protests marking the deaths of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo and four South Florida members of Brothers to the Rescue.

Security forces were besieging 40 members of the dissident Ladies in White gathered in the Havana home of their late founder, Laura Pollán, and arresting other members as they arrived to join them, the women reported.

Several dozen other dissidents were detained in the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Holguín to keep them from marking the two anniversaries, said Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz.

Dissidents said the crackdown appeared to be broadest since the same time last year, and was likely to expand over the next couple of days as they try to take to the streets for protests marking the five deaths.

Ladies in White leader Bertha Soler said police blocked vehicular traffic from Pollán’s usually busy Neptuno Street at 5 a.m. Wednesday and had detained several group members arriving to join the 40 women already inside since Tuesday.

Police also put other members under house arrest to keep them from heading to Pollán’s home and joining in a planned Thursday tribute to Zapata — singing the national anthem, prayers and sifting through old photos of him and his family, she added.

“If we have time, and the idea hits us to go outside, we’ll do it,” Soler told El Nuevo Herald by phone from the Pollán home.

Zapata, a political prisoner, died Feb. 23, 2010 after a lengthy hunger strike to protest prison beatings. The Cuban air force shot down two Brothers to the Rescue civilian planes over international waters on Feb. 24, 1996, killing all four men aboard.

There was no immediate word on the whereabouts of the top dissident detained, former political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer García, who on Tuesday sent out the text message that he keeps pre-typed in his cell phone: “I have been detained.”

Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, who said he had met with Ferrer in the Cuban capital just before he received the message, declared Ferrer “kidnapped” because police have said they have no record of his detention.

An implied threat that pro-Castro mobs will confront any dissidents who try to stage public protests in the next few days was published Wednesday in the government-approved blog Cambios en Cuba — Changes in Cuba.

“It is obvious that the Cuban people will not renounce what is without a doubt their principal right, the defense of the revolution, and will give the reply appropriate for this type of provocations,” it said.

In a separate post, the blog alleged that a meeting of dissidents Wednesday at the Havana residence of the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba was designed to instruct the dissidents on how to oppose the communist government.

“The agents at the service of the empire will be trained once again by U.S. diplomatic officials on the techniques of non-violent struggle (and) the way in which they should march on the streets of the Cuban capital,” the post alleged.

“In sum, it is an attempt to synchronize the mechanisms of propaganda and disinformation dedicated to fooling public opinion and making it seem as though a Libyan or Kosovo formula is needed in Cuba,” it added.

The U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana said no meeting at all was held in the residence Wednesday.

Sánchez Santa Cruz and other dissidents, meanwhile, reported a string of arrests around the island, apparently short-term detentions designed to avert public protests over the next couple of days.

Seven members of the Ladies in White, founded by female relatives of political prisoners, were detained in eastern province of Santiago as they tried to travel to Havana to join the main protests there, dissidents reported.

And at least nine dissidents and three children were reported detained as they stood outside a State Security office in the eastern town of Palma Soriano to demand the release of another dozen opposition activists detained there on Sunday and Tuesday.

Sara Martha Fonseca, one of Cuba’s most aggressive dissidents, reported Wednesday that police were surrounding her Havana home, where a group of opposition activists had gathered to mark the two anniversaries.

Police also were reported to be surrounding a group of dissidents who had gathered in a home in the eastern town of Santa Cruz del Sur with plans to stage a street march marking the twin anniversaries.

South Florida’s Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, meanwhile, issued a statement praising Zapata and the slain Brothers to the Rescue members as men “who gave their lives attempting to help the Cuban people.”

She added that “when the Cuban regime finally falls and freedom and democracy flourish on the island, it will be due, in part, to the sacrifices which each of these brave individuals have made.”