London-born singer with Kosovan roots opposes tourist development backed by president’s daughter
Dua Lipa has backed protesters opposing a Trump family-backed $1.6bn (£1.3bn) luxury resort on a protected Albanian island.
The London-born singer, whose parents are Kosovan Albanian, described the protest movement as “inspiring” on her Service95 Book Club podcast, recorded with Lea Ypi, the Albanian author and academic.
“I find it so inspiring to see how much people really care,” Lipa said. “What I actually find concerning is the principle that the government could just change the law to remove the environmental protection without any kind of public consultation.”
The proposed 1,400-acre development on Sazan – an uninhabited former Cold War exclusion zone – is being led by international investors including Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner.
It also has the backing of Edi Rama, Albania’s socialist prime minister, who has faced mounting calls to resign in recent weeks as hundreds gathered outside the parliament in Tirana, the capital.
The resort is planned along a stretch of wild beaches, forest and the Vjosa-Narta Lagoon, home to its population of roughly 3,000 flamingos – the source of the protest movement’s name, the “Flamingo Revolution”.
The project has become one of the country’s most contentious political issues since the government downgraded the site’s protected environmental status to allow construction. The EU and conservation groups have called the move a serious breach of international biodiversity commitments.
Mr Rama has dismissed the unrest as the work of political opponents, saying last month that it was a “beautiful” project that would go ahead regardless.
Ivanka Trump has been unapologetic about the scale of the plans. In a podcast interview of her own in May, she called the resort “massive” and beautiful, said she was “excited” about it, adding: “We have five miles of beachfront.”
Ms Trump also claimed that she and her husband first conceived of the project after spotting the coastline from a yacht years earlier.
Artur Shehu, a Miami-based businessman, sold a strip of the coastline to the Trump-led billionaire investors in April, despite mass protests already under way in Tirana.
Albanian prosecutors have issued a warrant for Mr Shehu’s arrest, alleging he trafficked drugs into Europe and laundered the funds through his property empire, faking the deeds for the Trump resort.
Mr Shehu denied all the accusations.
Residents of Zvërnec, the village nearest the project, have separately been contesting Mr Shehu’s claim to the land in court cases dating back more than a decade.
Albania, once one of the poorest and most isolated countries in Europe, is pushing for EU membership as it undergoes a building boom along some of the continent’s last unspoiled Adriatic coastline.
Lipa’s intervention carries added resonance given her own family history.
Her parents, Anesa and Dukagjin, fled Kosovo for London in 1992 amid the conflict, during which Serbian and Yugoslav forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovo Albanians.
Dua – whose name means “love” in Albanian – was born in London in 1995. The family returned to Kosovo in 2006, when she was 11, before she moved back to London alone at 15 to pursue a music career.
