Republic of Kiribati
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Flag of the Republic of Kiribati
The upper half is red with a yellow frigate bird flying over a yellow rising sun, and the
lower half is blue with three horizontal wavy white stripes to represent the ocean.
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The Gilbert Islands were granted self-rule by the UK in 1971 and complete
independence in 1979 under the new name of Kiribati.
The US relinquished all claims to the sparsely inhabited Phoenix
and Line Island groups in a 1979 treaty of friendship with Kiribati.
- CIA World Factbook.
Republic of Kiribati - Fotw
The bird is a frigate bird which represents power,
freedom and Kiribati cultural dance patterns.
www.fotw.us/flags/ki.html
Kiribati - wikipedia.org
The native people of Kiribati are called "i-Kiribati."
The word "Kiribati" is the local spelling of the word "Gilbert"
and the original name of this British colony was the Gilbert Islands.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiribati
Kiribati - U.S. Department of State
Kiribati (pronounced "keer-ih-bahs") consists of 32 low-lying atolls and one raised island scattered over an expanse of ocean equivalent in size to the continental United States. The islands straddle the Equator and lie roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The three main groupings are the Gilbert Islands, Phoenix Islands, and Line Islands. In 1995 Kiribati unilaterally moved the International Date Line to include its easternmost islands, making it the same day throughout the country.
Kiribati includes Kiritimati (Christmas Island), the largest coral atoll in the world, and Banaba (Ocean Island), one of the three great phosphate islands in the Pacific. Except on Banaba, very little land is more than three meters above sea level.
The original inhabitants of Kiribati are Gilbertese, a Micronesian people. Approximately 90% of the population of Kiribati lives on the atolls of the Gilbert Islands. Although the Line Islands are about 2,000 miles east of the Gilbert Islands, most inhabitants of the Line Islands are also Gilbertese. Owing to severe overcrowding in the capital on South Tarawa, in the 1990s a program of directed migration moved nearly 5,000 inhabitants to outlying atolls, mainly in the Line Islands. The Phoenix Islands have never had any significant permanent population. A British effort to settle Gilbertese there in the 1930s lasted until the 1960s when it was determined the inhabitants could not be self-sustaining.
www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/1836.htm
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Flag of the Republic of Kiribati