Singer Dua Lipa has voiced support for campaigners opposing a Trump family-backed luxury resort planned on a protected island in Albania. According to The Telegraph, the London-born star described the protest movement, known as the “Flamingo Revolution”, as “inspiring”.
Lipa, whose parents are Kosovan Albanian, discussed the issue during an episode of her Service95 Book Club podcast with Albanian author and academic Lea Ypi. She said she was encouraged by the level of public engagement with the campaign.
“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 $1.6 billion (£1.3 billion) resort will cover about 1,400 acres on Sazan, an uninhabited former Cold War exclusion zone. International investors leading the project include Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of US President Donald Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner.
The development also has the backing of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. His government has faced growing pressure in recent weeks, with hundreds of protesters gathering outside parliament in the capital, Tirana, and calling for his resignation.
Developers plan to build the resort along an area of beaches, forests and the Vjosa-Narta Lagoon, which is home to around 3,000 flamingos. The birds inspired the name of the protest movement.
The project has become one of Albania’s most controversial political issues since the government downgraded the area’s protected environmental status to allow construction. The European Union and conservation groups have criticised the move, calling it a serious breach of international biodiversity commitments.
Rama has dismissed the protests as politically motivated. Last month, he described the development as a “beautiful” project and said it would proceed.
In a podcast interview in May, Ivanka Trump described the resort as “massive” and “beautiful”. She said she was excited about the project and noted that it would include five miles of beachfront. She also said she and Jared Kushner first envisioned the development after seeing the coastline from a yacht several years ago.
Miami-based businessman Artur Shehu sold part of the coastline to the Trump-backed investors in April despite ongoing demonstrations in Tirana.
Albanian prosecutors have since issued an arrest warrant for Shehu, accusing him of trafficking drugs into Europe, laundering the proceeds through his property business and falsifying land deeds linked to the resort project. Shehu has denied all the allegations.
Residents of Zvërnec, the village closest to the proposed development, have also challenged Shehu’s ownership claims in court cases that date back more than a decade.
Albania, once among Europe’s poorest and most isolated countries, is seeking membership of the European Union while experiencing a construction boom along parts of its largely unspoilt Adriatic coastline.
Lipa’s comments carry particular significance because of her family’s background. Her parents, Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa, left Kosovo for London in 1992 during the conflict in which Serbian and Yugoslav forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovo Albanians.
Born in London in 1995, Lipa returned to Kosovo with her family in 2006 at the age of 11. She later moved back to London alone at 15 to pursue her music career.
