Albanians protest Jared Kushner's resort plans in protected areas

[libertybele]

Albanians protest Jared Kushner's resort plans in protected areas

Jared Kushner-backed luxury resort stokes days of protests in Albania

 Demonstrators rallied against a billion-dollar resort development in Albania linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump for a seventh consecutive day on Saturday.

Activists have dubbed it the "Flamingo Revolution," adopting the pink flamingo as a symbol of the wildlife they say will be destroyed if the project goes ahead.

President Trump's son-in-law is among a group of investors planning to transform Sazan Island — once a secret communist military base off Albania's Adriatic coast — into a luxury tourist destination. Hotels are also planned by the investors in surrounding areas in the Vjosa-Narta protected zone, which environmentalists say is rich with wildlife, including flamingo habitats.

.............Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of Mr. Trump, referenced her and her husband's plans for the luxury resort while speaking to the "Founders" podcast last month.

"I'm working on an incredible project with my husband in the Mediterranean," she said, before mentioning she and Kushner had "discovered" the island while sailing with friends.

"We swam to the island, we went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated," she said.

Anger escalated sharply last month when excavators and bulldozers moved onto the site. Footage of an activist being dragged away from the development went viral, further inflaming public opposition.

Thousands have taken to the streets in the country's capital every night since the incident and activists have told CBS News that a lack of transparency from the Albanian government — both over this project and wider issues related to alleged corruption — are central to the public outrage.

"There was no public consultation whatsoever," Aleksandr Trajce, executive director of the country's leading conservation group, the Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment in Albania, told CBS News on Friday. "There was nobody who was informed. Just one day, we saw bulldozers entering outside, opening up roads, cutting trees, destroying the dunes, and so on. So the public knew nothing."

"The government, after some time, they declared that there is apparently a development permit, but actually nobody has seen it, and they have not made that development permit public," he said......................

.............A representative for the development company Sazan Real Estate Development LLC and its investors, including Kushner, told CBS News the company was "excited about the opportunity to create a world-class destination and make one of the largest private investments in the region's history." .........................

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jared-kushner-backed-luxury-resort-stokes-days-of-protests-in-albania/

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Albania is the most impoverished country in Europe.

One would think it would encourage wealth to settle there.

[libertybele]

In Albania, anger grows against the government for supporting a Kushner-linked luxury resort

TIRANA, Albania — The way Ivanka Trump tells it, she and her husband Jared Kushner were vacationing on a friend's boat years ago on the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Albania when they stopped for a swim. "Effectively, that's how we found it," she told podcaster David Senra earlier this month about Sazan, an uninhabited island off Albania's Adriatic coast. "We swam to the island. We went on a hike barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated and it stayed with us ever since."

Over the ensuing years, the couple's captivating trip evolved into plans to build a luxury resort along a stretch of Albanian coastline directly across from the island. Albania's government has given the project preliminary approval, prompting daily protests outside Prime Minister Edi Rama's office in the capital Tirana.

Chanting "Edi Rama out!" thousands of people flooded the capital's streets on a recent day, calling on the prime minister to resign.

"It started with a national area being closed off to the public and having big lorries and trucks starting to build in a protected area," said protester Eden Hosha about Zvérnec, the coastal area across from the island. Hundreds of species of birds nest here in the winter.

But as these protests have grown bigger in recent days, they've become a public show of no-confidence in the Albanian government itself. "We're tired of these guys stealing from us," said Hosha. "Stealing our resources. Selling things that are not theirs to sell."

For decades, Sazan Island was used by Albania's then-ally the Soviet Union as a submarine base and testing grounds for biological and chemical weapons. Soviet-era masks still litter Sazan today................

[libertybele]

........"Ivanka Trump describes her and her husband's future development as one that shows restraint and care for this pristine environment. Bino sees it differently. "What we see from the project ideas, we see tall buildings," he says, "up to 10,000 rooms, so all of this is for a new city rather than an environmental project."

A group of environmental organizations have joined together to file legal challenges against Albania's government over the project. Dorian Matlija, their lawyer, says their case hinges on the fact the land this resort would be built on is protected under a range of international treaties, including the European Union's "Natura 2000," an ecological network of protected areas in the EU...........


https://www.npr.org/2026/06/16/g-s1-128162/albania-resort-protests-kushner-trump