Albania’s protests have started to become routine. Each night, protesters gather in Skanderbeg Square, a plaza in the center of Tirana, the capital. The meeting time has gotten later and later as the summer days get hotter and hotter, first at 6 p.m., then 7, now closer to 8. The crowd gathers and marches toward the prime minister’s office. They hold a small rally, some delivering speeches, before continuing the march around the ministerial offices or a main route in Tirana. They will do it all over again the next night. This is the ritual, now going on for 46 days.
The movement began at the end of May in Zvërnec, near Vlorë, in southern Albania, after private security clashed with local residents protesting the installation of a barbed wire fence that blocked beach access. Though it hasn’t been confirmed who put up the fence, this same stretch of beachfront has been connected to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.
In 2024, Kushner announced plans to develop this stretch of the Zvërnec coastline, and to build a billion-dollar luxury resort on Sazan Island, a former military barracks off the coast. The same week private guards dragged away a local protester, Ivanka Trump, Kushner’s wife and the president’s daughter, described on a podcast how she and Kushner “found“ Sazan, allegedly on a boating excursion.
“Not only the island, but we have five miles of beachfront directly across from the island, this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other, beautiful white sand beaches,” Trump told host David Senra.
The lagoon happens to be part of the Vjosë-Nartë, a protected wetland that includes a migratory bird route and a critical wildlife habitat, including for some 70 endangered species. Environmental groups have been fighting the potential development of this area for years. But the recent crackdown in Zvërnec became a symbol of an unaccountable and untransparent land grab in Albania. Out of that erupted Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution”—an homage to the flamingos that wade in the threatened lagoon—which has channeled a deep public anger and exhaustion with the country’s broken and corrupt political system.
“It’s just the sentiment that we, as Albanians, cannot make a living here in Albania, and that our country is turning into a paradise for foreigners, but a living hell for Albanians,” Arilda Lleshi, an activist involved in the protests, told the Prospect.
Once the protests spread to Tirana, Lleshi was surprised that each day more and more people kept showing up, and not just the usual protesters but entire families, from elderly to young kids. A longtime activist, she had gotten used to protesting and seeing those demonstrations disperse or peter out. “This energy doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop soon,” she said. It is now one of the largest and most sustained, mostly peaceful street mobilizations since the collapse of Albania’s communist regime in the early 1990s.
“It’s very peaceful, and this is, I guess, our strongest weapon,” said Xhemal Xherri, an activist and conservationist with PPNEA, an Albanian environmental NGO that has been fighting to preserve the Vjosë-Nartë Protected Area. There is a corner where kids paint and draw signs. Bright flamingos are everywhere: on signs or as cutouts that stick out above the crowd.
Prime Minister Edi Rama has largely denounced the protests, blaming everything from foreign interference to international anti-Trump sentiment. “ANYONE WHO TRIES TO DRAG ALBANIA BACK DOWN WILL NEVER SUCCEED AGAIN,” Rama has said. Rama has been cagey on the actual status of the development project on Sazan Island, but has largely defended these types of development initiatives.
“Albania should not be a country that fears an extraordinary project like this one, where exceptional partners have come together to invest four billion euros [$4.7 billion],” Rama said, according to Al Jazeera. “There is no chance for this investment to stop as long as I am here.”
Rama’s resignation is among the protesters’ demands, but their rage is directed at the entire political class, from Rama and his Socialist Party to opposition leader and former president Sali Berisha. One of the common protest slogans is: “Rama në burg, Berisha në burg”—roughly, “Rama to jail, Berisha to jail.”
Migen Qiraxhi, a civic activist who works with Qëndresa Qytetare, a Tirana-based governance NGO, said the public has tired of its leaders taking “all of the spoils for themselves rather than the benefits trickling down to the broader population.”
The Kushner-linked project is symbolic of this, though the protests are ultimately challenging the political forces that allowed such a deal to happen. In 2024, the Albanian parliament passed Law No. 21/2024, which permitted the construction of five-star luxury resorts in protected areas, along with anything needed to maintain that, like electric and water infrastructures. That same year, Kushner released renderings of his plans for the Albanian coast and Sazan.
Albania’s office of the special prosecutor (SPAK), an independent judicial watchdog, has launched investigations into this and other aspects of the project. This week, SPAK said it was investigating a Miami-based businessman, Artur Shehu, for forging deeds for the land where the Kushner resort is planned. (Shehu, who is also wanted for laundering money from narcotrafficking, denied the allegations to Reuters through an attorney.) Though the project was initially linked to Kushner’s firm Affinity Partners, which is backed by billions in foreign investments, including from Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati funds, the entity now managing the project is Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, which includes U.S. partners and the Qatar-based Assets Group and Albanian Kastrati Group.
On SPAK’s probe, a spokesperson for Sazan Real Estate Development LLC said in an email that they are “not a party to that matter and are not the subject of any investigation. We continue to believe the underlying land acquisitions were conducted lawfully and in accordance with applicable procedures. As always, we respect and will cooperate with any lawful process as required.”
As for the resort plans themselves, the spokesperson said that the “project remains in the planning and design phase, with our team continuing to refine scope, approach, and vision through a deliberate process that prioritizes environmental stewardship and showcases the country’s natural beauty.”
Prime Minister Rama’s resignation is among the protesters’ demands, but their rage is directed at the entire political class.
The persistent protests are proof that Albanians aren’t buying the developer rationales anymore. As many people told me, the public is not reflexively opposed to development projects, or foreign investment, but citizens want transparency and accountability. “The key issue is not necessarily who the partner is, but whether rule of law is respected, [whether] citizens feel adequately informed, consulted, and represented when decisions affecting their communities and public resources are made,” Erida Skëndaj, head of the Tirana-based human rights organization the Albanian Helsinki Committee, said in an email.
Or as Qiraxhi put it, the promises of prosperity that result from these projects always seem to end in cases of corruption. “It’s not that this government has succeeded to build, let’s say, 10 masterpieces, and citizens are trying to refuse the 11th,” he said.
Albania remains one of the poorest economies in Europe, and the country still has net outward migration, particularly among young people seeking better employment and educational opportunities. Leaders like Rama have sought to boost Albania as a destination for foreign investment, especially in tourism and now high-end and luxury tourism, with the promise—but little proof—that it will trickle down to the rest of the population.
“Health is a catastrophe. The educational system is a catastrophe, but Rama is talking about yacht marinas, about luxury resorts, about the tallest tower in Tirana, things which have little to do with the day-to-day concerns of the people, and everything to do with the problems of … let’s call them the ‘billionaire class,’ as your Bernie Sanders would call them,” said Blendi Kajsiu, an Albanian political scientist and associate professor at the University of Antioquia, in Medellin, Colombia.
This risks intensifying some of the tensions already present in Albania’s booming mass tourism sector. The Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) recorded an 82 percent increase in tourism in 2024 compared to 2019, and tourism makes up about 22 percent of Albania’s GDP, according to recent data. But that economic boost has also come with concerns about overdevelopment. The cost of living has increased, and critics argue the sector has diverted resources at the expense of local needs. Public spaces, like beaches, have become privatized, and that division is at the core of these protests.
Moneyed interests and corrupt dealings in Albania have privatized public power, Kajsiu argued. “First you privatize institutions, government, parliament, and then you privatize territories, and then you put up fences around public land and public spaces.”
Xherri, the conservationist, thinks of the sand dunes near Zvërnec. They took hundreds of years to be created, and they could be destroyed in hours. The sand dunes are also natural monuments, he said, ones that are supposed to be public, for Albanian citizens to visit. “If the resort will be constructed again, this nature monument, and the beach will be something … let’s call it illegal for the whole population.”
Xherri says that, for now, the construction near Zvërnec has stopped, though he suspects this is unlikely to be the end of the fight. But it is something.
“The people really are angry with this government and with the arrogance of this government,” he said. “We don’t have so [many] big wins. We have some wins, and we’ll continue.”
