Career
In the 1940s, Briceag was given a ten-year sentence in the gulag for distributing anti-communist flyers. He was forced to work in coal mines for the length of his sentence. His prisoner number was "P169".
After his release, he was sentenced to seven more years of exile.
He later became a symbol of resistance to Soviet occupation of Moldova. The award citation described him as "a life-long activist for the defense of human rights and the defense of other former Gulag prisoners in Moldova".
The following year, he served on the Rudolf Vrba Jury for People in Need"s One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, serving with fellow Homo Homini-winner Ales Bialacki. The same year, Briceag created controversy by opposing the re-installation of a statue of Vladimir Lenin in his hometown of Bălţi.
Briceag threatened to burn the statue down personally if it were completed.
The Supreme Court of Moldova ultimately overruled the Bălţi City Council"s decision to allow the statue. Briceag also worked with Amnesty International and served as the Bălţi coordinator of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. Briceag was noted for his large "Solzhenitsyn-style" beard.
A few months before his death, he pledged to shave it if Moldova united with Romania, a move Moldova"s communist party opposed.
He publicly requested that his body be donated to Chişinău"s Nicolae Testemiţanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy following his death.