(AFP) – Police used tear gas and water cannon on Thursday against protesters outside the parliament in Albania, where a tourism project linked to the Trump family has sparked outrage. Since late May, angry Albanians have protested daily the planned construction in a coastal nature reserve of a vast luxury hotel complex linked to US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. In recent weeks, protesters have also clashed with police outside parliament in the capital, Tirana, and attempted to pelt lawmakers with eggs.
Preliminary work on the Trump project has already caused irreparable damage to a once pristine stretch of Albania’s coast and destroyed the nesting sites of both birds and loggerhead turtles, which are threatened with extinction, scientists and activists say. On Thursday, police were out in force from early morning and used water cannon and tear gas to repel demonstrators who attempted to push through security cordons to get closer to parliament, AFP journalists at the scene reported. Six police officers and 11 protesters were slightly injured and received treatment at a hospital in Tirana, the health ministry reported.
The latest demonstration started ahead of a vote in parliament on approving a four-million-euro ($4.6-million) subsidy for a Kanye West concert held in Tirana earlier this month. The lawmakers eventually approved the subsidy during a chaotic session, Belind Kellici, an MP for the opposition Democratic Party, told AFP. It was backed by 80 MPs — all from the ruling Socialist Party — in the 140-seat assembly. Prime Minister Edi Rama had earlier pledged the funding, saying it was necessary to prevent the concert from being cancelled.
The decision further angered protesters, who had already been demonstrating on the streets for more than a month against the Trump resort project, which has become a flashpoint for concerns about perceived corruption and a lack of government transparency. The luxury tourist complex, planned in a protected heritage site among flamingo colonies and on an uninhabited island nearby, has attracted huge crowds and international attention over environmental concerns and its links to the Trump family.
Olshi Nika, a marine biologist who heads the NGO EcoAlbania, told AFP this week the damage already wreaked by the preliminary construction work was “an absolute biodiversity massacre”. No official headcounts have been released for the nightly protests, but AFP journalists at the demonstrations estimate that crowds numbered in the thousands until at least mid-July.
© 2024 AFP
