TIRANA, Albania — Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Albania’s capital for the 35th consecutive night Saturday, keeping up their demand that Prime Minister Edi Rama step down, that his government be temporarily replaced, and that the country undergo constitutional reform and a crackdown on corruption.
Television footage showed enormous crowds moving along Tirana’s main boulevard toward Skanderbeg Square. The exact number of participants has not been independently confirmed.
The nightly protests were originally triggered by a luxury coastal resort development project in a protected natural area — a project connected to U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Over time, the demonstrations have expanded into a broader movement against the government and corruption. Crowds were heard chanting “New Albania” and “Edi Rama, resign.”
Saturday’s march was rich in symbolic gestures. A large bust of Rama was constructed and then pulled down using a rope — a moment deliberately echoing the February 1991 collapse of a statue of longtime communist ruler Enver Hoxha, an event Albania marks on February 20th each year. Since Saturday also happened to fall on Rama’s 62nd birthday, some in the crowd brought “birthday cakes” fashioned from cement, a pointed jab at the construction projects at the center of the controversy. Protesters also sang a mocking version of “Happy Birthday” directed at the prime minister.
Some participants carried pink flamingo balloons, a nod to the birds said to be endangered by the resort construction. The ongoing protest movement has come to be known as “the pink flamingo revolution.”
After roughly two hours of marching, a large portion of the crowd headed to a nearby police station to demand the freedom of individuals who had been detained during protests near parliament on Thursday.
Some demonstrators smashed the windows of the police station, and officers responded by turning a water cannon on the crowd to push people back.
