The Berber flag or Amazigh flag is a flag that has been adopted by many Berber populations including protestors, cultural and political activists. The flag was inaugurated in Wadya, a town of Kabyliasituated in Tizi Ouzou, a province of Algeria, by an elder Algerian Kabylian veteran named Youcef Medkour. The flag consists of a horizontal tricolor of blue, green, and yellow, with a red Tifinagh letter yaz or aza in the center.
History[]
Mohand Arav Bessaoud, an Algerian activist and founder of the Berber Academy, designed the flag in 1970. It was used in demonstrations in the 1980s, and in 1997, the World Amazigh Congress at Tafira on Las Palmas in the Canary Islands made the flag official.
Symbolism[]
Each color corresponds to an aspect of Tamazgha, the territory inhabited by the Berbers in North Africa:
- Blue represents the sea.
- Green represents the mountains.
- Yellow represents the desert.
- The red of the letter z (ⵣ in Tifinagh) represents resistance and the martyrs/free man of the Imazighen.
The letter z represents the word Amazigh, the root of which it is taken from.