Havana's streets were calm Monday on the one-year anniversary of unprecedented anti-government demonstrations, with Cubans denouncing a preemptive security clampdown to avoid a repeat. 

Amid fresh accusations of human rights abuses and calls from the United States for the Cuban government to "respect" dissident voices, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said he was convinced the country would emerge from what he described as a "complex situation." 

There had been calls for new protests on the anniversary, but more than a dozen dissidents, artists and independent journalists said on Twitter they had received warnings from the police not to leave their homes, from where some reported patrols outside.

They also included the parents of protesters in jail.

"I am under siege," tweeted Yurka Rodriguez, the mother of 25-year-old Yunaikis Linares, one of hundreds placed behind bars by the communist regime. 

Rodriguez used the hashtag #SOSCuba.

"No one will go out on the street," student Carlos Rafael Dominguez, 18, told AFP.

"There is no bringing it (the government) down," he said resignedly.

Added 64-year-old Maria de los Angeles Marquez: "People are resisting going out" because of the heavy sentences -- up to 25 years in some cases -- meted out for participation in last year's spontaneous outburst of anti-government ire.

Mass protests broke out across Cuba on July 11 and 12 last year, with demonstrators clamoring for food and freedoms amid the island's worst economic crisis in 30 years, and shortages of fuel, medicines and food.