Hundreds of people demonstrated today in a protected area on the Albanian coast to denounce a plan to build a luxury resort there by a company linked to the Trump family, a French News Agency reporter found.
Environmentalists from across the country and residents gathered at the Viosa-Narta lagoon about 150 kilometers southwest of Tirana, where a construction site has been under construction in recent days.
“This whole sea area is a protected zone. Destroying it would be fatal for biodiversity,” Emiliona Puja, who works in the financial sector, told the French news agency.
On a sandy beach in front of the blue waters, some protesters held red Albanian flags, others carried inflatable or paper pink flamingos, the birds that have become a symbol of the movement, and chanted “Cancel the project!”
Riot had broken out in the area during an initial demonstration in late May after barbed wire fencing was put up to demarcate the zone, which has since been removed. People had rushed in after seeing bulldozers on the beach on the internet.
Those machines were not there today.
Protests against this project, estimated at around €4 billion and linked to Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, have taken hold in Albania.
Thousands of protesters have been gathering every night for almost a week in Tirana, the capital, to denounce what they say is the planned destruction of entire sections of the protected area of Viosa-Narta.
This lagoon is a refuge for many migratory birds, including pink flamingos.
“The problem is not only about the transparency of this process, but also the fact that all this was done with complete disregard for the environmental importance of this zone,” explained Denisa Kaza, a member of the Albanian environmental protection association PPNEA, stressing that this is “one of the most important biodiversity sites in the Mediterranean.”
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said yesterday, Friday, that “there is no cause for concern” and that the project has not yet been approved. He stressed that “the best experts” in the world “have been mobilised” and that it was “the creation of something unique”.
