Kushner’s lavish project collides with Albanian discontent

The protests were sparked by public outrage over violence by security guards at the site of a planned coastal development project financed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushnerand Gulf investors, with an estimated cost of more than $4 billion.

For Americans on the left, Albanians resist the corruption of the Trump family and the so-called opportunistic billionaires.

Right-wing conspiracy theorists defend a different theory:

they see resistance against Israel and supposed plans for what they call a “New Epstein Island off the southern coast of one of the poorest nations in Europe.

However, Albanians actively participating in the protests disagree.

“No one here protests against Trump or against Israel,” said Elis Kodra, 33, who attended a recent demonstration with several thousand people outside the office of Albania’s embattled prime minister with his girlfriend.Edi Rama.

“We protest against everything else,” he added, complaining that Albania has been governed since the collapse of communism 35 years ago by the same selfish politicians who are constantly in and out of office, awarding state contracts to their business friends and paying little attention to the economic and other grievances of ordinary citizens.

The protests began after a video circulated online on May 30 showing private security guards dragging a man who had joined a few dozen residents and environmental activists on a beach in southern Albania that Kushner wants to be part of a luxury hotel and resort project.

They had gathered to protest the sudden appearance of a metal fence with barbed wire on the beach, which is located in an area designated as “protected landscape“, allowing construction, near the village of Zvernec.

Both the area and the nearby, virtually uninhabited Sazan Island are part of the proposed development plan.

Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, the Kushner-linked company overseeing the project, stated that the guards who assaulted the protester were employees of an outside security company.

“The incident,” he said, “is worrying and does not reflect the standards we expect from any of the parties working in relation to the project.”

The government attempted to calm public outrage by canceling the licenses of two private security companies involved in the beach unrest, dismissing the local police chief and ordering the dismantling of the fence.

However, the protests continued, turning Tirana’s central boulevard into a nightly carnival of young and old, kicking off what has been called the “revolution of flamenco” from Albania, in reference to the rich birdlife of the protected area.

Every night a large banner is displayed in English that reads: “Albania is not for sale.”

Rama stated in an interview that in January he met in Tirana with Ivanka TrumpKushner’s wife, and a team of architects who were involved in the project.

However, he insisted that no contracts had been signed or construction permits issued.

The island, where the project is located, belongs to the State and has not been sold nor will it be sold.

Online claims that construction has already begun were part of a “hurricane of digital hysteria,” he said, although he acknowledged that some “ground preparation” had been done, including the laying of a gravel road through a forest.

While some protesters eager to attract the attention of foreign television crews have waved signs in English against Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the main targets of their ire are Rama, 61, who has been in and out of government since 1998, and former Prime Minister Sali Berisha, 81, who leads the main opposition party.

The protesters chanted:

“Rama to jail, Berisha to jail!”

Rama, who secured a fourth term as prime minister last year when his Socialist Party won a landslide victory, said Albanians were being used as “cannon fodder” in “a fight in the United States and Europe against Trump.”

According to him, the online avalanche of exaggerated claims about the number of protesters, misinformation about their targets and false reports of violent clashes demonstrate that “democracies are committing suicide” by “allowing this poison and this infection to completely corrode their bodies.”

“Democracy without truth It is no longer democracy”he added.

The government itself, however, has added to the online controversy by claiming that Iran has been stoking protests to get back at Albania for harboring the Iranian opposition group People’s Mujahideen.

Officials have also maintained that neighboring Greece’s tourism industry, eager to avoid competition from Albania, has instigated and even financed the protesters.

Elez Biberaj, a political scientist and former director of the Albanian service of Voice of America, stated that the protests were not directed against President Trump’s family, but rather “reflect the collapse of public trust throughout the political system” of Albania.

This has largely been lost in translation, turning the internal travails of one of the poorest, most pro-American, and smallest countries in Europe—its population is less than 3 million—into a global cause célèbre for both the left and the right on platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram.

Lutfi Dervishi, 58, an independent political analyst, said he grew up before the collapse of communism and admired the United States as a beacon of the rule of law and freedom of the press.

“I never imagined that Americans would look to Albania for inspiration,” he declared.

The protesters have mainly inspired American progressives.

The senator Bernie Sanders praised them on social media as the vanguard of the resistance against the “global oligarchy,” writing that Albania had risen up against an “environmentally disastrous luxury resort planned by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Qatari billionaire partners.”

Rachel Maddow, the liberal-leaning television news anchor, applauded the “huge protests against the corruption of Donald Trump and his family.”

Some sectors of the American right have also been encouraged by the demonstrations.

Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist, praised protesters for trying to take back their land “from Israel, Kushner, the Rothschilds and Ivanka Trump,” claiming that Albania “is heading toward civil war” with “bombings and machine gun attacks.”

In recent days, videos recorded years ago during the Tirana riots have been portrayed online as acts of violence sparked by Albanian rage against Trump and his family, while a large gathering of jubilant Spanish soccer fans near a beach in northern Spain has been branded online as an anti-Trump protest in Tirana led by victorious young Albanians.

Online support for the Albanian protests has sometimes descended into openly anti-Semitic tirades.

Some include claims that Jews want to occupy parts of Albania and subject its largely Muslim population to the same fate as the Palestinians.

These types of statements worry some protesters, who fear that foreign activists will try to exploit their cause.

Baki Goxhaj, 41, a practicing Muslim and pro-Palestinian activist in Vlorë, the coastal city near Kushner’s proposed project, commutes to Tirana with his wife to join the protests.

He commented that he had told others: “Don’t shout ‘Down with the Jews!'”

According to him, the protest movement “is not against Trump or against the Jews,” adding:

“It is against our own government, which is very corrupt.”

What Goxhaj and many others consider corruption is often related to the sale and use of land, a highly sensitive issue in a country where former communist dictator Enver Hoxha confiscated all private property after taking power in 1944.

When communism ended, Albanian courts were forced to settle an avalanche of property claims between former owners and their descendants.

Gentian Mocka, 56, said his family has been fighting in court for decades to recover more than 91 acres of land confiscated by the communist government.

The property, which he claims was fraudulently obtained by a local lawyer working for Artur Shehu, an Albanian living in Miami, is part of land sold to Kushner’s partners in Qatar as part of the luxury resort project.

Albania’s anti-corruption agency, the Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime, last week issued an arrest warrant for Shehu, a naturalized U.S. citizen, accusing him of purchasing land and using Albanian construction projects to launder drug money.

According to Rama, the funds from the sale of his land to the Qataris have been frozen, but the sale is still on.

Shehu did not respond to messages seeking comment.

He had previously called allegations of meetings with drug traffickers “fake news” and claimed to have arranged the sale of the land to Kushner and investors through an anonymous intermediary.

Mocka stated that if he could get his land back, he would gladly sell it for Kushner’s project.

“The whole family wants to sell and just wants to get this over with,” he said.

Rama stated that protesters were free to gather peacefully outside his office, adding: “Albania is not a dictatorship.”

However, he insisted that they would not hinder Kushner’s tourism project.

“It will not be cancelled,” he said. “That’s for sure.”