DUSHANBE, November 20, 2014, Asia-Plus -- Tajik capital is making preparations for National Flag Day

Dushanbe Mayor Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloyev has signed a decree endorsing a series of events on the occasion of National Flag Day, which is marked in Tajikistan on November 24.

An official source at the Dushanbe mayor’s office says various activities will be organized in all districts of the city.

The main event – festive procession that is expected to involve more than 8,500 people – will start at 5:00 pm.  They will march through Dushanbe streets and gather at the National Flag Park, where a festive concert will take place,” the source said.

Besides, roundtables, conferences and exhibitions dedicated to the National Flag Day will take place in Dushanbe.

On November 24, traffic on the Roudaki (from the Kokhi Vahdat State Complex to the Bukhoro Street) and Ismoili Somoni (from the Sino Street to the Roudaki Avenue) avenues as well as the Sheroz, Shotemur and Foteh Niyozi streets will be restricted.

We will recall that 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 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.

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.