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Thousands March in Albania After PM Says Pristine Land 'Belongs' to Kushner-Backed Group
"One week later, we are still here, stronger than yesterday," said one group opposing a proposed luxury resort project supported by Jared Kushner.
Jun 08, 2026
Albanians took to the streets in droves for the eighth consecutive day on Sunday to protest a proposed $1.6 billion luxury resort complex backed by US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, one of several investors in the project, which opponents say is both corrupt and disastrous for wetlands and wildlife.
"One week later, we are still here, stronger than yesterday," said the Albanian Ornithological Society, a leading critic of the proposed development. "Millions around the world are united in one voice for nature, for justice, and for the protection of what belongs to everyone, standing for every protected area in Albania."
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has vocally defended the project amid mounting public backlash, saying in a recent interview that the land marked for development "belongs to the investors," not the Albanian people.
Rama also criticized the thousands of people who have turned out to protest the luxury hotel project as well as international media coverage of the demonstrations, saying that "there is no chance" that "the projects in Albania will be defined by street protests."
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama admits Jared Kushner’s new private island will be exclusively for the elite.
He says the land no longer belongs to the Albanian people and is now under the control of Jared Kushner and his investors.
"The aim is to build the most exclusive."… pic.twitter.com/95IM0YX6xI
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) June 7, 2026
Demonstrators, many raising pink flamingo cutouts to decry the project's expected impacts on the vulnerable bird and other wildlife, have demanded cancellation of the resort project and Rama's resignation, accusing him of steamrolling environmental concerns to bolster the country's tourism industry and curry favor with the Trump administration. Kushner currently works for the administration as a "special peace envoy."
"We are stronger than your bulldozers," chanted demonstrators over the weekend.
Thousands of Albanians took to the streets of Tirana in the largest protest this week against a plan by a company linked to Trump's son-in-law to build a luxury resort in an environmentally sensitive area pic.twitter.com/aJaKz3ju0A
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 7, 2026
As The New York Times reported last year, Rama heads the government committee that gave "Kushner and his business partners the right to move ahead with accelerated negotiations to build the luxury resort on a 111-acre section of the 2.2-square-mile island of Sazan that will be connected by ferry to the mainland."
"Mr. Kushner’s Affinity Partners, a private equity company backed with about $4.6 billion in money mostly from Saudi Arabia and other Middle East sovereign wealth funds, is pursuing the Albania project along with Asher Abehsera, a real estate executive that Mr. Kushner has previously teamed up with to build projects in Brooklyn, New York," the Times added.
Lea Ypi, an Albanian academic, wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian on Monday that "Albanians know that real-estate speculation without state support means ordinary citizens will struggle to buy a flat or pay the rent."
"They know that luxury tourism means holidays in your own country become a privilege for the few," Ypi added. "With no unions to speak of and a labor movement that only appears in communist-era footage of May Day parades, work conditions are so exploitative that only those from countries even more desperate are willing to take the jobs that arise."
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'Nation is Not For Sale': Thousands of Albanians Protest Kushner Resort Plans in Protected Wetland
"Barbed wire cannot silence people," said one conservationist. "A protected landscape of global importance is under attack, and people are demanding an end to the devastation."
Jun 03, 2026
As President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner moves forward with plans to build a luxury resort on one of the last untouched parts of the Mediterranean coast, thousands of Albanians have taken to the streets in protest.
On Tuesday evening, a throng gathered outside the office of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in the capital Tirana, holding inflatable flamingos and signs reading "Nation is not for sale" and "I don't want Albania like Dubai," Reuters reported.
Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, is seeking to build a €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) resort on the uninhabited island of Sazan and around 10,000 hotel rooms and villas along a stretch of coastline near the protected wetland of Vjosa-Narta.
According to BirdLife International:
The area shelters over 70 endangered species and more than 200 bird species, including flamingos and Dalmatian pelicans. It sits on the Adriatic Flyway, a critical migration corridor for millions of birds traveling between Africa and Europe each year. The surrounding waters are among the last Mediterranean refuges for the Mediterranean monk seal, one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals, and a key nesting ground for the loggerhead sea turtle.
In February 2024, Albania's parliament amended its protected areas law to allow the development of luxury resorts. Just weeks later, Kushner announced plans to build in Albania, which spurred an investigation by anti-corruption prosecutors.
Kushner himself has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but protesters view the construction of the sprawling complex as a symbol of the country being sold out to powerful oligarchs without their consent.
"We have a protected area, but above all, our state has allowed construction work to continue without consultation and without transparency," said Klajdi Belo, an activist who attended a demonstration on Monday, told Euronews.
Activists have said bulldozers have begun tearing through the coastline and gravel has already been dumped on age-old sand dunes—damage that could take hundreds of years to repair. Meanwhile, a large barbed-wire fence has been erected, blocking public access to the beach.
Over the weekend, protesters assembled outside the barricades surrounding the development near the coastal village of Zvërnec.
"Don't defend the oligarchs!" one man was seen shouting into a megaphone. "Those are the citizens' properties!"
During these protests, a video captured an activist being dragged along the ground by a group of black-shirted security contractors.
"There is great public outrage over what is happening in Albania, but the spark was what happened in Zvërnec," said Arilda Lleshi, who said the man and others were there because they were "protesting against a fence that had been installed there illegally."
As activists have called for heavy machines to be removed from the protected area, Rama has said no amount of public backlash will lead him to abandon the project.
"Under no circumstances do we receive the stigma of being a country where investors are met with hostility," he said in a statement to Reuters. "There is absolutely no chance that the investment will stop as long as I am here."
Anouk Puymartin, head of policy for BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, said that it's not just the habitat of endangered species at stake, but the question of whether longstanding environmental protections can be shredded at the whim of the wealthy.
"Barbed wire cannot silence people. Thousands have taken to the streets of Tirana to defend Vjosa-Narta from destruction driven by private profit," Puymartin said. "A protected landscape of global importance is under attack, and people are demanding an end to the devastation."
Ivanka Trump, the US president's daughter and Kushner's wife, has come under scrutiny for her comments about the development project recently, which were blasted as "out of touch."
In a recent interview, the Trump heiress described being inspired to purchase the island of Sazan while vacationing there years ago: “We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it. We swam to the islands. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way, up to the top. And we were just captivated.”
She described the project of developing the island as part of an effort to "help realize its potential" and described it as "the culmination of all of my experience in real estate, all of my travel, a lot of reflection on how I want to live."
But Puymartin describes the project as an encroachment by private wealth onto land that was previously held for the benefit of everyone.
"Nature belongs to everyone, not a handful of investors," she said. "The horrendous situation in Vjosa-Narta shows why laws are crucial to protect both people and nature. But those protections mean little if governments fail to uphold them."
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