Trump and Kushner resort plan sparks “flamingo revolution” in Albania

Channel 4 News, 29 July 2026 Reported by Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor

Full transcript of the broadcast report and the interview with Prime Minister Edi Rama. Prepared from the transcript published by Channel 4 News. Speaker labels added; Albanian place names restored to standard spelling (the published transcript renders Zvërnec as “Svernic/Zvernic” and Narta as “Nata”). Speech is otherwise reproduced as broadcast.

LINDSEY HILSUM (narration): They love the shallow, briny water. Thousands of flamingos nest and breed in Albania’s Narta Lagoon, the largest and most biodiverse delta in the region. But it’s endangered. Hence, the Flamingo Revolution. For the last two months, the streets of Tirana have been filled with protesters, because none other than Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have plans to develop, the protesters say, to spoil the Albanian coast.

PROTESTER: The oligarchs from our place, from other places, they think they can come in our country and they can do whatever they want. But it doesn’t work like that. Not for Kushner and Trump.

HILSUM (narration): Just off Albania’s Adriatic coast lies an island, waiting to be discovered by a latter-day Robinson Crusoe.

IVANKA TRUMP: 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. Not only the island, but we have five miles of beachfront directly across from the island, this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other. So we’re very excited.

HILSUM (narration): So we got on our own boat, not a super-yacht, to visit this island paradise.

HILSUM (on Sazan): Well, Ivanka Trump was right about one thing, Sazan Island is certainly beautiful. But it’s not undiscovered. It’s the property of the Albanian state and the Albanian military has been here for decades.

HILSUM (narration): Day-trippers lounge on the pebbly beach and on the pillboxes, the distinctive bunkers built by Albania’s paranoid communist dictator Enver Hoxha during the Cold War. There’s no water, no electricity, but the plan is for an exclusive luxury holiday development.

HILSUM (on Sazan): Ivanka Trump says that she hiked barefoot up here. It’s quite a hard surface, but maybe she’s made of sterner stuff than me. And I guess no one told her about the vipers, the poisonous snakes, nor about the landmines. But other than that, it’s the perfect place for a high-end resort. The flamingos are everywhere.

HILSUM (narration): My guide, whose grandfather served as a soldier on the island in the 1960s, took me to the abandoned school, which the children of military families used to attend. He says the government is selling the country to the highest bidder.

GUIDE (translated): I would rather be poor than sell Albania to anyone.

HILSUM (narration): Back on the mainland, someone has spotted a commercial opportunity. But the beaches of Zvërnec are largely undeveloped, home to the endangered monk seal, the loggerhead turtle and more. This beach might soon be covered by a multibillion-dollar development of hotels, villas, swimming pools. My guide here is an award-winning environmental activist.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: We’re speaking about more than 2,000 species.

HILSUM: 2,000 species?

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: Only in the delta of the Vjosa. And we have more than 200 bird species, and many, many more. 18 different habitats, priority habitats, which means this is an exceptional area for Albania and for Europe.

HILSUM (narration): On his Instagram feed, Jared Kushner has revealed a vision for this beach, with 6,000 hotel rooms and villas, some ten storeys high, not to mention a marina for 350 yachts. At the end of May, protesters attacked a fence that had appeared overnight, along with porta-cabins and earth-moving equipment. This footage of private guards dragging a protester away sparked demonstrations across the country. Workers then removed the fence, but it’s not clear if it might go up again.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: So all this concrete…

HILSUM: So this is all new?

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: This is all new.

HILSUM (narration): Today, a few bolts and concrete foundations show where the fence was built.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: It was a public beach before, one day before, and then the next day you couldn’t go. If you are a tourist or you are a biologist that you want to go to study or you are a resident from the area, you couldn’t get in.

HILSUM (narration): We drove along a new road that the developers built in May. They’ve stopped, at least for now. Scientists say the endangered loggerhead turtles were disturbed in the dunes where they were nesting. These pictures show the diggers that they used, now removed. But they sent us a statement saying they’re working towards creating a world-class destination rooted in thoughtful design and environmental stewardship. Its future, they said, would be determined by Albania and the Albanian people.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: The whole excavation that happened here…

HILSUM (narration): Near the end of the road, they built a bridge over the channel that connects the lagoon to the sea.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: During the construction, the canal was blocked and of course the fish was damaged in that time.

HILSUM (narration): And there’s another question. Whose land is it anyway? Albania’s anti-corruption authority has accused one of the men who sold it to the developers of forging title deeds and money laundering, which he denies. The inhabitants of Zvërnec village say it’s theirs. 90-year-old Eleni tells us they’ve been fighting in court for the last 20 years.

ELENI (translated): So we’re fighting for our own land.

HILSUM (narration): The sun pulls the tide, and the flamingos have no idea that the fate of their habitat has sparked an uprising. One that may yet define how Albania is governed and who will benefit from its future.

HILSUM (outside the Prime Minister’s office, Tirana): I’m now outside the Prime Minister’s office, as you can see and probably hear. There’s a fairly small crowd gathered here. The protesters come every night. It tends to build up as the evening wears on. At the beginning, two months ago, it was very much focused on the environmental issues that I’ve been reporting on. The people I’ve been speaking to in the last few days, they’ve been talking more about corruption, about, they say, how the rich and powerful get away with breaking the law, about what they see as the dysfunction at the heart of government. And they’re calling for Edi Rama, the Prime Minister, he’s been in office since 2013, he’s won three terms, he’s talking about standing for a fourth. They’re calling for him to resign.

The interview
LINDSEY HILSUM: First of all, thank you very much, Mr Prime Minister, for seeing us. Protesters, nearly 60 days now. How does it feel to have protesters outside your office for night after night after night like this?

EDI RAMA: Amazing for the country, for the society, because in the same boulevard not long ago, kind of 15 years ago, people were killed with real bullets by protesting peacefully. I have reflected a lot upon this protest, and I have come to realise that for the people it’s not, and rightly so, it’s not about the facts, it’s about higher expectations, bringing people to the streets. Which is not a bad thing. This is amazing, that’s why I said fantastic, so I understand them.

HILSUM: And have you rethought any of your policies because of these protests?

RAMA: Which policies?

HILSUM: The policies of the project at Sazan and Zvërnec, which was how it all started, with the endangerment of the flamingo habitat and the other habitats there.

RAMA: No, there is no project started.

HILSUM: Well, I’ve seen it.

RAMA: No.

HILSUM: What have I seen then? Should I not believe my own eyes?

RAMA: I’m going to tell you what you’ve seen, but there is no project started. And to start with Sazan, which you included in your question, in Sazan there is no project, there is no deal. Bringing Sazan in is totally unnecessary because we don’t have anything in Sazan yet.

HILSUM: But of course Mr Kushner and Ms Trump related the two together, didn’t they? They said that the two projects are connected.

RAMA: Yeah, the idea is connected.

HILSUM: Well, tell me how it is then, because I went to Zvërnec and I saw where the project had started and then stopped.

RAMA: No, the project has not started in Zvërnec.

HILSUM: So what did I see then with the fences and so on?

RAMA: I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you. It’s not the start of the project, it’s just the adjustments for doing the preliminary work before the permission would be issued based on environmental assessment, geological, hydrological.

HILSUM: But you normally do an environmental assessment before you bring in the bulldozers, because the bulldozers can disturb the environment. So normally you would get a few scientists just going in and having a look.

RAMA: The bulldozers there have been used to open the path for the people, for the community, to open a road for the community through the private property, to not block the people from going back and forth.

HILSUM: But they were going back and forth on just the sand road anyway, so they weren’t blocked before, but they were blocked afterwards because they were blocked by the fence.

RAMA: Again, now, if you want the facts, I’m telling you the facts.

HILSUM: Mr Kushner said that you were on the yacht with them when they found it, found the island in 2020.

RAMA: I was invited to join some people in a yacht that stopped in Albania to refuel, going to Montenegro.

HILSUM: This was Nat Rothschild’s yacht?

RAMA: Yes. So I was invited to go. I went, and I met with Jared and Ivanka. I don’t know if they heard before about Albania or anything, but for sure I can tell you that they were not interested in anything about Albania in terms of direct interest. They were very much interested in the history, where they were, and so on. Number one. When this happened, and when some months after in Davos, I met Jared, and he expressed this interest, and he said that he would be interested to explore the possibility of investing. And of course I said yes. How would I say no? I said yes. It is the most normal thing to me. This will be one of the most amazing things that will happen to Europe since a long time. Not many amazing things happened to Europe since some time.

HILSUM: Why is it amazing?

RAMA: Because it will be not what people imagine, wrongly so, and not what you imagine, wrongly so.

HILSUM: Well, I’m not imagining. I’ve just looked at what Jared Kushner put on his Instagram feed, and I’ve looked at some of the other plans, but I understand that those are not the final plans.

RAMA: What was put on Instagram was just a teaser. The project has evolved, I mean the process has evolved. Now there are top architects involved, and landscape designers that are famous for working with wetlands, very famous, and at the same time we are doing the environmental impact assessments independently from them. So the project does not aim to brutalise a beautiful place. It aims to regenerate it.

HILSUM: The European Commission has expressed concern, and obviously Albania’s accession to the European Union is very important to you. The Commission is worried about environmental laws, and it’s also worried about the change in the environmental law in 2024, which allows a sort of loophole, as it were, for strategic investment. Do you think maybe you could look at that again?

RAMA: Listen, it’s good, it’s very good that the Commission is concerned, and it can’t be otherwise. And by the way, we are negotiating to become members of the European Union, so just the idea that we can go in a direction with a project, or with any project that does not fit with European standards is preposterous. So I’m just saying about the project, calm down and talk facts, and comment facts, and look to facts. Don’t be overexcited about telling how catastrophic everything is.

HILSUM: You seem quite personally hurt by these allegations.

RAMA: No, no, no, I’m not hurt.

HILSUM: But you seem to take it quite personally.

RAMA: Listen, everything is personal. Whoever does his job or her job with passion has a personal thing with that. But I’m not hurt. This has helped me. I said to you before, to me, this protest, the June one, not this one, has been both. It has been the affirmation that the country is on another level, and on the other hand, a mirror to see what we need to reflect upon.