DUSHANBE, November 24, 2014, Asia-Plus – Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has congratulated the people of the country on National Flag Day.

In his televised address, President Rahmon, in particular, noted that fostering patriotism, national self-consciousness and respect for spiritual values and national shrines is one of the key factors of sustainability of an independent state    

“Respect for national shrines and state symbols, including the national flag, is a component part of civil responsibility of each member of society,” the president noted.

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.