Gheorghe Briceag (15 April 1928 – 16 August 2008) was a

Moldova Moldova ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Moldova ( ro, Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised state of Transnistri ...

n human rights activist notable for his opposition to

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

rule. In the 1940s, Briceag was given a ten-year sentence in the

gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...

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. In 2004, Briceag won the

Homo Homini Award The Homo Homini Award ( Latin: "A human to another human") is given annually by the Czech human rights organization People in Need to "an individual in recognition of a dedication to the promotion of human rights, democracy and non-violent solution ...

of the Czech NGO People in Need, which recognizes "an individual who is deserving of significant recognition due to their promotion of human rights, democracy and non-violent solutions to political conflicts". 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 Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He escaped from the c ...

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 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

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 Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...

and served as the Bălţi coordinator of the

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights The Helsinki Committees for Human Rights exist in many European countries (the OSCE region) as volunteer, non-profit organizations devoted to human rights and presumably named after the Helsinki Accords. Formerly organized into the Internationa ...

. Briceag was noted for his large "

Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...

-style" beard. A few months before his death, he pledged to shave it if Moldova united with Romania, a move Moldova's

communist party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...

opposed. He publicly requested that his body be donated to

Chișinău Chișinău ( , , ), also known as Kishinev (russian: Кишинёв, r=Kishinjóv ), is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial center, and is located in the middle of the ...

Nicolae Testemiţanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy Nicolae may refer to: * Nicolae (name), a Romanian name * ''Nicolae'' (novel), a 1997 novel See also *Nicolai (disambiguation) *Nicolao Nicolao is an Italian given name and a surname. It may refer to the following: Given name *Nicolao Civital ...

following his death.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Briceag, Gheroghe 1928 births Romanian people of Moldovan descent 2008 deaths Moldovan activists Moldovan anti-communists