Like many residents of Zvernec, a community on Albania’s coast, Brunela Mertiri swam and sunbathed at the Pishe Poro beach all her life—at least until the razor-wire fences went up this spring.
Those fences mark the proposed site of a luxury tourist resort that would stretch over 13 million square feet of coastal Albania, including protected lands around the Narta Lagoon and Sazan Island. The highly controversial Sazan resort project is backed by several companies affiliated with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and has won the support of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. The development broke ground in April, but it has since stalled, following calls for an environmental review and investigations by Albania’s independent corruption watchdog, the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK).
“This is my land. They do not deserve to come and take our land, our sea, our forest. It is ours; it is not theirs. It is not Kastrati’s nor Kushner’s nor Trump’s nor anyone else’s,” Mertiri said in a recent viral video clip, referring to Shefqet Kastrati, one of Albania’s most powerful businessmen, who is also linked to the project.
The video of Mertiri, as well as a clip of a young man being dragged by two private security personnel during a protest, conveys how enraged Albanians have become over the project. For more than a month, tens of thousands of protesters in Tirana, Albania’s capital, have marched to Rama’s office, demanding the cancellation of the project, his resignation, and more generally, the end of corruption in a country eager to join the European Union.
