Celebrations to mark a National Flag Day took place across the whole country on November 24. On this occasion, various cultural and sorts activities were held in all regions of Tajikistan, news.tj reports.
On November 23, President Emomali Rahmon congratulated Tajikistanis on the National Flag Day. In his televised address, President Rahmon, in particular, noted that the national flag of Tajikistan is a symbol of unity, solidarity and national statehood.
In Dushanbe, the main cultural activities dedicated to the National Flag Day took place in the National Flag Park near the Dushanbe Flagpole. The event was attended by members of the government and parliamentarians.
Recall, residents of Dushanbe were witnesses of the national flag of Tajikistan rising to the top of a 165-meter flagpole on May 24, 2011. The flag is 1,800 square meters, measuring 60 by 30 meters.
The flagpole has been designed and installed by Trident Support, based in San Diego.
The flagpole consists of 12-metre sections of steel tube fitted together by crane. The design phase for the flagpole began in July 2009. Fabrication of the pole's sections was completed in Dubai in October 2010. The sections were then shipped to Dushanbe, where construction of the flagpole began on November 24, 2010, Tajikistan's National Flag Day. The final assembly and erection took place during April and May 2011.
The flagpole reportedly cost 3.5 million U.S. dollars and was part of 210 million USD worth of projects celebrating the 20th anniversary of Tajikistan independence.
Tajikistan was the last of the former Soviet republics to reveal a new flag, which was adopted on November 24, 1992. The one common link between this and the 1953 Tajik SSR flag is the choice of colors - red, white and green.
The crown represents the Tajik people, the name itself is derived from tajvar, which means "crowned". In traditional Tajik cultural aspects the magic word "seven" is a symbol of perfection, the embodiment of happiness and the provider of virtue. According to Tajik legend, Islamic heaven is composed of seven beautiful orchids, separated by seven mountains each with a glowing start on top. The middle white stripe is one-and-a-half times the size of the red and green stripes. The red represents the unity of the nation and the symbol of the sun and victory; the white represents purity, cotton, the snow on the mountains and the unity of the people; and green stands for the spiritual meaning of Islam and represents the generosity of nature of the country. The symbol charged in the middle of the white stripe is a crown surmounted by an arc of seven stars.
Tajikistan celebrated National Flag Day for the first time on November 24, 2009.
Some 300 students marched through Dushanbe’s main street with a 90-meter-long Tajik flag on November 24, 2009 to celebrate the holiday. As part of the festivities, 22 runners completed a multi-day relay of several hundred kilometers in which they carried a Tajik flag from the town of Tursunzoda on the Tajik-Uzbek border to the site for construction of the Roghun hydropower plant.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon in November 2009 signed a law establishing National Flag Day, making Tajikistan the second country in Central Asia after Turkmenistan with such a holiday.