TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albania’s rallies against a coastal development project have garnered global attention, both for their connection to Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and because of their curious mascot.
The luxury project has two components: a small resort on the uninhabited island of Sazan and a coastal development in the nearby Narta Lagoon area, which is a wildlife reserve frequented by wetland species including flamingos.
Every evening for weeks, protesters have marched by the thousands in the capital Tirana, holding up cut-outs of flamingos. The result has been a nickname for their fledgling movement: “The Flamingo Revolution.”
Here are some of its members.
The artist who makes flamingos
Fatma Paja, 28, lives in Tirana and runs a creative studio with her two sisters. She’s part of a group of artists who created the cut-out flamingos that have become a fixture at the nightly rallies.
“I have long used art as a means to express the injustices and dissatisfaction associated with everyday civilian life in Albania,” Paja told The Associated Press on Friday while painting a foam flamingo pink for that evening’s protest.
Paja’s group also organizes drawing and coloring activities for children during the protest, so that willing parents are able to join.
At the demonstrations, she leads chants through a loudspeaker. “Albania is not for sale!” she shouts, and “Don’t touch Narta!”
The project has sparked outrage because of the location’s pristine nature and unique habitat that would be irreversibly devastated, according to environmentalists.
Citizens are demanding the project’s halt, citing a lack of transparency and concerns that in many similar projects environmental standards were not met.
“I am against a pro-elitist project that is blocking a fully protected area and destroying it,” Paja said. “It is a project that has no legal basis and has not been supported by any study on the damage it would cause to the environment and nature.”
She said she is optimistic, believing the protest has already produced results.
“This protest has motivated people to speak up and react,” she said, adding that, because it was not affiliated with political parties, it fostered trust and solidarity.
Although unaffiliated with a specific party, protesters are almost universally calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
From tour guide to protest leader
Arben Kola, one of the first protesters in the “Flamingo Revolution,” has worked as a tour guide for more than a decade. He takes visitors to historic and nature sites around Albania — including the area around the prospective development.
Tourism in Albania has seen a sharp increase in recent years, with people relishing the nation’s vast, undeveloped coastline. Among those who have been impressed were Kushner and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. She explained on a podcast last month that they discovered the site of the planned development while on a friend’s boat and stopping for a swim.
It was yet another example, for Kola, of the government abusing its power, and he couldn’t stomach it any longer. He joined the nascent protest movement when it was just getting started.
“Albania is facing a high level of corruption, with the privatization and giveaway of land, beaches, valleys and rivers,” the 46-year-old said in an interview while leading a tour group through Tirana.
Albania’s anti-corruption agency has opened an investigation related to the project. The government says the land is privately owned, but rival claims over its privatization have emerged.
In an interview with the AP this month, Rama dismissed environmental objections as the result of misinformation and said the development was turning Albania from a country once ignored by investors into one “where the big capital wants to come and the big investors want to come.”
It is unclear exactly what Kushner’s investment role is in the project’s development, but Rama confirmed his involvement.
The prime minister said a formal environmental impact assessment has not started because the plan for the development has not been finalized. He said international architects and environmental specialists are still shaping the proposal.
Kola says it looks to him like the project is already moving full steam ahead. He is furious that work has already begun to clear land inside a nature reserve with excavators and other heavy machinery.
Today, Kola is one of the people who organizes the crowds by speaking to them on a loudspeaker. He’s still floored by just how much the demonstrations have grown.
“We didn’t believe the protest would reach this size,” Kola said, adding that people repeatedly ask him whether the movement will continue.
“It depends on the people,” he says.
The protest’s matriarch
Unlike most of Albania’s protests in over three decades of democracy, the young people on the streets this time are joined by an increasing number of retirees. Bujare Ishmi, 70, is one of them.
The former engineer attends the protest almost every night, wearing a placard that reads: “You have the power of crime, we have the power of truth.”
“Nona! Nona!” protesters chant when she arrives, welcoming her. The word is an Albanian term of endearment for an elderly female family member, and signals that she is the protest’s matriarch.
Ishmi said she has long dreamed of seeing a protest like this, describing Albania’s political system as a “half-hearted democracy.”
Her husband is a former political prisoner under Enver Hoxha’s four-decade rule, and she says neither of them is opposed to foreign investment. Their main concern is the lack of transparency.
Investment brings progress, “but the location must be known and the proper parameters must be maintained,” she said.
Zana Cimili, The Associated Press
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