Prime Minister Edi Rama used a United Nations speech on the dangers of information manipulation to recast mass protests against his government as the result of an AI-driven deception campaign.
He did acknowledge the demands of the Flamingo Revolution or explain how a local protest over coastal development became a sustained challenge to his rule.
Instead, Rama described an alleged campaign spreading false claims of an Israeli invasion of Albania’s coast, with different versions tailored to people’s fears of national betrayal, religious provocation and foreign occupation.
“Citizens protested against a phantom enemy,” he said. “Antisemitic tropes entered our public discourse.”
“Fear became anger, anger became mobilisation, and fabrication became political reality.”
The protests began over a luxury resort development linked to Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, in the protected coastal landscape at Zvërnec. The destruction of natural habitat and the beating of a protester by private security guards as state police stood by fuelled wider outrage.
BiEPAG documented the assault and the police’s failure to intervene, describing how the incident intensified public anger.
BirdLife International reported that forest, ancient dunes and protected habitat had been cleared illegally in Vjosa–Narta, the coastal ecosystem whose flamingos gave the movement its name.
The demonstrations soon grew beyond opposition to the resort. Thousands took to the streets over government corruption, alleged ties to organised crime and the power of oligarchs, demanding Rama’s resignation.
Daily protests have entered in their fourth month. Their scale, duration and demands have made them a significant challenge to the government.
In Rama’s account, however, protesters appeared as people tricked into taking to the streets. Their grievances and calls for accountability were absent.
Rama mentioned neither the violence nor the environmental destruction. He omitted the development’s link to Kushner.
So were the criminal allegations surrounding the land sold for the development. The Wall Street Journal reported that prosecutors accused land seller Artur Shehu of involvement in cocaine trafficking and laundering drug proceeds through property, including disputed land at Zvërnec.
Rama used his account of the protests to promote an Albanian AI-based digital “Mirror”, which he said would detect manipulation and help citizens understand how information reached them. He insisted that truth must be backed by evidence and open to challenge.
Yet he offered no evidence in the speech that an AI-driven campaign had caused the demonstrations. Instead, he linked public anger to a fabricated Israeli invasion and antisemitic narratives, replacing the documented triggers—the destruction of protected habitat and violence against protesters—with an unsupported explanation.
That framing cast his government as a defender of citizens against deception, rather than one facing demands to answer for its conduct. In a speech warning against misinformation, Rama offered a misleading account of the protests themselves.
Shpërndaje te miqtë
