The Flamingo Revolution Continues Despite Arrests And Intimidation

By Fioralba Duma

August 2, 2026

Source: Pressenza

(Image by Trivet)

On July 23—now the 54th day of the protest—demonstrations took place not only at the usual afternoon time but also in the morning, starting at 8:00 AM, in front of Parliament. Several hundred people gathered around the building while a plenary session was underway inside to decide on the issue of foreign ownership of agricultural land. Rather than congregating in a single spot, protesters spread out across the various entrances to Parliament, which was already ringed by metal barriers and a heavy police presence. The police officers—who were legally required to display identification badges on their uniforms—were not wearing them that day. It was a sign of what was to come.

By now, you know that the main demonstrations have been taking place in the late afternoon every day for over fifty days: a procession starts at Skanderbeg Square and heads to the Prime Minister’s office for a sit-in lasting several hours, followed by a march that continues along an indefinite route for an undetermined amount of time. These regular events, which have become a fixture of daily life in the capital, Tirana, are supplemented by special actions held in the mornings or on weekends.

Such actions are organized, for instance, when Parliament is in session—like the protests on July 2 and July 20—or outside other institutions; an example is the July 9 protest at the Ministry of Culture against the allocation of four million euros in public funds for a concert by Ye (better known to most as Kanye). Meanwhile, on weekends, the mobilization shifts to fenced-off areas that have been closed to the public, including Zvërnec (May 13, June 30, June 6), Rrjoll (June 13), and Kakome (June 21).

Returning to the bills under discussion in Parliament, one of the contested measures is a draft law published for consultation by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, titled “On the transfer of ownership of agricultural land to foreign natural and legal persons.” The text paves the way for the purchase of agricultural land by foreign citizens and companies, stipulating that the new provisions would take effect seven years after Albania’s potential accession to the European Union. Currently, foreign investors can lease agricultural land for up to 99 years but cannot purchase it. The new text, however, would allow the sale and purchase of both private and state-owned land, including land belonging to the pool of public lands classified as “available” or not yet allocated—all within an Albanian context where many families have yet to legalize their property holdings and numerous properties and land plots remain subject to ownership disputes.

The bill was debated just days after Deputy Minister of Agriculture Fatmir Guri and the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Oren Lavi, signed a memorandum during a visit covering “agricultural technologies, sustainable production, food security, and joint research” between Albania and Israel. That was June 2nd—the third day of the “Flamingo Revolution.”

Around 10:00 a.m., tensions at the protest—which had begun peacefully—escalated sharply when police attempted to move barricades to prevent eggs and tomatoes from being thrown at lawmakers’ vehicles. After failing to push back the demonstrators, law enforcement used pepper spray and two water cannons to disperse the crowd. For several minutes, the entrance to Parliament turned into a scene of confrontation, with tomatoes and eggs flying through the air.

From the square—unusually uncongested despite the peak hour—chants rang out such as “Rama, resign,” “Rama to jail, Berisha to jail,” “Parliament of crime,” and “Your end has come,” as well as Italian-language slogans like “Edi Rama, son of a b****” and “Edi Rama, f*** off.” Slogans directed at the police included “Police of crime” as well as “Hiqni kapelet” and “Bashkohuni me ne”—calls for them to remove their caps and join the protest for the future of Albania.

The protests continued until around 4:00 PM, when the State Police detained 32 people and took them to Tirana’s police stations No. 1 and No. 3; two of them remain in custody. In its monitoring report, the Albanian Helsinki Committee confirmed—and stated in a press release—that among those detained were two women who did not understand the reason for the restriction of their liberty. One of them reported being taken away while simply filming.

Elsa Paja—an activist, artist, and designer who, together with her sisters in the artistic trio Trivet, produced the photos for this article—stated:

“They think they can scare us, but the behavior of the police forces only strengthens our resolve, as it demonstrates that the Flamingo Revolt is on the right side; every Albanian should join the protests.”

Carrie Ann Morgan, an American sociolinguistic anthropologist who has lived in Albania for years, was detained while on her way home, without being informed of her rights or the charges against her. Edison Lika—an activist with *Mesdhe* and a volunteer for *Drejtesi Sociale*—was dragged away while away from the protest itself; he had been broadcasting live online with News24, reporting on the police pursuit of citizens.

Mirela Ruko—an activist and Tirana city councilor for *Lëvizja Bashkë* (Together Movement)—was detained simply for being present at the protest, without facing any specific charges of violence, as reported by *Citizens*. Emiljando Kitaj, a member of the same party, also reported—as did activist Arnen Sula of the *Tek Bunkeri* association—the degrading and abusive treatment they received from the police while being taken to the station.

Also present at the police station was a protester with injuries to his head and arm, who had been transferred there after being taken from the military hospital. This mirrors the experience of other protesters who were removed from emergency rooms—where they were being treated for injuries caused by police-deployed agents—only to end up in police custody. Accounts also describe individuals being dragged along the ground and the use of tear gas in the presence of children, the elderly, the sick, and people with disabilities. Protester Skerdi Topalli specifically denounced the treatment of women and mothers who were dragged away by officers.

Among those taken to the police station was Vjolanda Peca, a journalist for Citizens.al, who was detained while documenting the protest. Zylyftar Bregu, a representative of the Albanian Helsinki Committee, condemned both her detention and interrogation; he argued that—even though she was not displaying her press badge at the time, despite having identified herself as a journalist—she should have been treated differently by the police and not subjected to a restriction of her liberty, a stance also voiced by the Association of Albanian Journalists (AGSh) in its statement.

However, the crackdown did not disperse the mobilization; protesters remained outside the entrances and exits of Parliament until well after 5:00 PM. At the conclusion of the protest, organizers called on citizens to march toward police stations No. 1 and No. 2, where those who had been detained were being held.

The Flamingo Revolution is neither dead nor backing down. The response on July 23rd demonstrates—and indeed reinforces—the Albanian people’s determination to resist. The flamingos continue to occupy public space despite intimidation, smear campaigns, barricades, water cannons, tear gas, and police detentions. The strength of the flamingos lies precisely in their persistence. The strength of the Albanian flamingos lies not in meeting violence with violence, but in continuing to occupy public space despite intimidation, delegitimization  campaigns, barricades, water cannons, tear gas, and police detentions. Being peaceful does not mean accepting injustice, nor does it mean stopping or backing down.

Today is the 56th day, and the protest set to draw the diaspora is scheduled for August 14, 15, and 16.

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This article was originally published by Pressenza; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.

Sovereign Rot

From Eko Atlantic to the Niger Delta, elite enclaves have become the defining spatial expression of Nigeria’s political order.

By Ninu Sonuga

August 3, 2026

Source: Africa is a Country

Illustration of Eko Atlantic City, Lagos. All illustrations © 2026 Ninu Sonuga via original publication in Africa is a Country

In the heart of Ikoyi, Lagos, a fifteen-story concrete ghost haunts the skyline. The Old Federal Secretariat was once a nerve center of Nigerian power, functioning as the heart of Nigeria’s civil service. Since the federal capital was moved to Abuja in 1991, this complex has been left to rot. In a city defined by fervent construction and the relentless pursuit of newness, its stillness, frozen in time, is a provocation.

The abandoned Ikoyi Federal Secretariat.

Nigeria’s independence in 1960 arrived with serious ambition. Gifted by the British to mark the young nation’s sovereignty, the 25-story Independence Building served as the Republic’s first federal secretariat, anchoring the administrative machinery of the new state. As the civil service swelled during the oil boom years, the government erected the Ikoyi Secretariat in 1976. This new structure was designed to monumentalize the nation’s soaring aspirations—an architectural declaration that a young republic had outgrown its colonial infancy and entered a new era of industrial sophistication.

The Independence Building was eventually appropriated by the military and renamed Defence House. Today, it stands as a shadow of its former glory. Following a devastating fire in 1993, the military command abandoned the charred remains, relocating to the new capital of Abuja. Left behind in Lagos, the old tower’s narrow apertures now watch over the public square below like hollow eyes, stripped of its utility and its national significance.

Down the road, this architecture of abandonment reaches its literal peak at NECOM House. Built as the tallest skyscraper in the country, this telecommunications tower was conceived to be the crown jewel of the Lagos financial district; today, it suffers the same slow rot that plagues the civic landscape. This pattern of neglect repeats across the city center. Lagos is now a museum of deferred promises, littered with monumental structures left underused, suspended in time, or surrendered to decay.

The vacuum left by the government’s silent withdrawal from these sites has inevitably invited squatting and illicit activity. When the state refuses to occupy and maintain its landmarks while failing to provide housing, resources, and safety, it creates the conditions it then criminalizes. What appears as squalor is state neglect made visible. These buildings become shelter for those the state has rendered invisible. In a twist of irony, these administrative monuments have been involuntarily democratized.

While state-owned monoliths sit idle for decades, the government exhibits a violent agility elsewhere, bulldozing lives and properties in informal settlements with little to no prior notice.

Makoko, a historic community of roughly 100,000 residents, is one of Lagos’s most storied waterfront settlements. Established on the lagoon by the Egun fishing people, it has evolved over generations into a complex urban ecosystem built entirely on stilts. In December 2025, armed demolition teams backed by state authorities entered this settlement under the pretext of enforcing a safety corridor beneath a high-tension power line. Demolitions started two days before Christmas.

Over 3,000 homes, schools, and clinics were bulldozed and burned, displacing about 10,000 people. Protesters and civil society organizations have alleged that the demolitions resulted in deaths, including infants and elderly residents.

Thousands were displaced just days before Christmas.

The official justification followed a familiar script: environmental concerns, urban renewal, the language of progress. But beneath the bureaucratic vocabulary, what it produced was displacement, lives dissolved into the water. In this context, the long-term abandonment of these spaces reads as an intentional pattern of uneven urgency. The government grants itself unlimited leniency regarding its own monumental dereliction, while displaying a ruthless impatience for the expedient improvisations of the people it has abandoned.

Deracination has shaped Lagos’s socio-economic fabric for generations, and the map of the city can serve as a historical record of state-led displacement. Take Obalende, whose name translates to “the [British] king chased us here”—an etymology the historian K. Dike traced, in a 1997 Guardian essay, to the colonial army’s expansion into the area. Today, it is a bustling hub bordering Lagos Island, but its origins trace back to the colonial era, when the British crown displaced the local population in favor of expanding an army base. This is a foundational precedent of spatial injustice that outlived the empire. Instead of dismantling this colonial architecture of exclusion, the modern Nigerian state has embraced and optimized it, expressing its sovereign authority through the violence of forcible land clearance rather than the duty of housing its most vulnerable communities.

The message to the average Lagosian is clear: Space is scarce when it belongs to the poor, expendable when it belongs to the state, and available to those with enough clout to bend the city to their will. When there is corporate capital to secure or elite enclaves to engineer, the state magically rediscovers its capacity for urban planning. Ultimately, the rotting high-rises of the Marina and the demolished stilt-houses of Makoko are symptoms of the same institutional disease. They represent a state that has fundamentally abdicated its social contract, leaving behind a city that is simultaneously starved for public life and choked by avarice.

For those tasked with shaping the built environment, this landscape of sovereign rot poses a sharp ethical challenge. We are trained to obsess over the new, chasing the next “smart city.” But what does it mean to design for the future in a city where the most basic act of care—maintenance—has been undervalued by those meant to uphold it the most?

To answer this is to confront a notoriously wicked problem, an entangled crisis in which the professional domains of the architect, the policymaker, and the developer are all implicated. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer notes a sobering truth: “As the land becomes impoverished, so too does the scope of [our] vision.” Lagos, and indeed much of Nigeria, suffers acutely from this exact starvation of perspective. On paper, the mechanics of urban revitalization are not rocket science. However, the unchecked greed permitted to fester across the country has corroded the foundations of every civic institution and shriveled the imagination of our city-makers.

When presented with decades of water-adapted vernacular literacy in Makoko, or the complex maritime history of Tarkwa Bay, the developer’s only legible response is demolition—flattening centuries of ecological resilience to install a yacht club or a generic “luxury” tower. This impoverished vision can only copy; it cannot synthesize. It views indigenous knowledge as a blight to be cleared and abandoned structures as dead weight, all while funding exclusive archipelagos reclaimed from the sea. Eko Atlantic stands as the ultimate expression of this hubris: a private enclave engineered for the few, rising from the ocean while the waterfront communities of the many are erased to make room for the supply chain of exclusivity.

By chasing the illusion of the “blank slate,” the architect becomes the aesthetic enforcement arm of this system, providing the glossy renders that legitimize spatial violence long before the bulldozers arrive. The policymaker completes the triangle. It is the state that issues the demolition orders, absorbs the legal challenges, and quietly steps aside for the developer. The FBT Coral Estate agreement, in which the Lagos State Government negotiated a 25 percent stake in the “luxury” development designed to replace Makoko, exemplifies this arrangement explicitly. Everything is transactional.

By trading the social contract for a real estate ledger, the state has rendered its own history meaningless and its people invisible. Lagos continues to rise, but it rises against itself.

The abandoned Secretariat and the state-sanctioned displacement are evidence of a system functioning exactly as those who benefit from it intend. “Smart city” rhetoric and urban renewal frameworks create the assumption of a state that has lost its way, merely requiring the right policy intervention to find its footing again. But a government that can mobilize armed demolition teams against impoverished communities two days before Christmas, while its own civic infrastructure crumbles unremarked across the city, has not lost its way. It has chosen one.

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This article was originally published by Africa is a Country; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.l

Ninu Sonuga

Ninu Sonuga is a London-based designer and writer from Lagos, currently part of the New Architecture Writers cohort 8, sponsored by the Architecture Foundation and the Architectural Review.

The Most Shocking Climate News of 2026

Robert Hunziker

 August 4, 2026

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Image by Casey Horner.

The UK Green Party’s former leader Caroline Lucas recently nailed the Labor Party for “burying the most explosive report” of the year by UK military and intelligence sources. The concealed report warns “that the global collapse of ecosystems poses grave threats to the UK’s security and food supply within as little as five years.” (Source: As Europe Burns, a Climate Cover-Up Continues, The Nation, July 30, 2026)

“The UK ‘has no future’ if it cannot ‘restore the natural world on which we rely for our food, water, and clean air,’ said Chris Hinchliff, who is among the members of Parliament pressing the government to release the full report, rather than a shorter, redacted version. Even that version, which was obtained by The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey, ‘paints a devastating picture of severe food shortages, price rises, migration, political destabilization, and possible war, resulting from the collapse of ecosystems, fueled by the human-induced climate crisis and over-exploitation,” Ibid.

Global collapse of ecosystems, if realized, if in fact it truly happens within five years, is certain to create havoc throughout the world, but no governments, other than this leak of a high-ranking report, has suggested to the public the risks of collapse of ecosystems leading to food shortages with panic and fighting. Why not?

After all, it was only a few months ago that an esteemed panel of UK scientists held a public forum, i.e., UK National Emergency Briefing d/d November 27, 2025, that essentially spelled out the same problem with powerful evidence of near-term collapse of some ecosystems. Why don’t the nations of the world confront the causes and inform the public as soon as possible? In five years, it’ll be too late to inform anybody. The only way to get the public onside to help fight this scourge is to explain the issue to the public and requests they embrace efforts to mitigate.

Spain’s PM recently declared a “climate emergency,” with scorching fires consuming much of the countryside for the second year in a row. PM Pedro Sanchez called on political parties “across the ideological spectrum ‘to reach an agreement, a State pact, (and) to address the climate emergency,” Ibid.

Throughout the EU extreme heat is sucking soils dry and destroying agricultural crops. In America, nearly 50% of the Lower States are in some level of drought. The Rocky Mountain “water towers for the Southwest” experienced dreadfully scattered snowfall and the entire Colorado River Complex that feeds water to 40 million people is broken, Lakes Mead and Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the United States, are at dangerously low levels. The emergency recognized by PM Sanchez is “everywhere as an emergency.” Spain is not alone.

But governments throughout the world are too timid to be effective and thus seduce their constituencies by greenwashing or ignoring reality often in concert with media. They can’t face the truth because they don’t have any good answers or they’re paid off to ignore the truth, to hide it from the public. Sadly, politics are for sale to the highest bidders that could care less about public welfare. If they truly cared, problems like this would already be addressed.

Which is good reason for people to rise up against incompetent leaders. The world is infested with them. For example, “Aides to former Labour prime minister Keir Starmer twice quashed plans to release the UK report… allegedly for fear that the climate-denying Reform UK Party would attack Labour for putting climate concerns ahead of the cost of living,” Ibid. How bloody stupid is that?

“Climate denial persists in the UK media as well: Even as wildfires scorched Europe, the front page of the Rupert Murdoch–owned The Times of London featured a rant against the net-zero emissions goal that scientists say is essential to preserving a livable planet,” Ibid. Oh please, this is beyond stupidity. It’s something worse than stupidity.

This kind of behavi0r by weak-kneed leaders is sickening. It’s insulting to the public. It’s a crime against humanity to fail to tell the truth accompanied by outrageously blatant failure to search for answers, mitigation measures, exploring whatever can be done to protect citizens but alas, at the end of the day, failing to protect them.

This failure of leadership in the world started in earnest for all to see when 195 nations agreed at Paris 2015 that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, oil, gas, and coal cause global warming, and they all agreed to cut these harmful emissions. Today, less than a handful of those original 195 nations will even come close to meeting their obligations. They have failed. The public deserves to know the truth about their failure, and why it unintentionally but ridiculously promotes excessive global heat throughout the planet today.

It’s even worse than that, according to The Nation, most news outlets across Europe are not reporting the “influence of climate change driving the massive fires.” But they are providing images of people having fun on the beach with massive fires raging in the distant background. Oh please!

The Most Shocking Aspect: The Public Knows

“Covering Climate Now’s 89 Percent Project spotlights the reality that 80 to 89 percent of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger climate action. In this summer of smoke and fire, the public is waiting for their politicians and their press to respond. ‘Voters are much more tuned into this than most of our [elected] representatives are,’ author George Monbiot said on the UK’s Channel 4. ‘And indeed than most of the media is,” Ibid.

That’s 80-89% of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger climate action. But ever since WWII, the United States has been the world leader in many respects, especially militarily. It is the only country with military in 80 countries with 750 individual bases. No nation is in such a favorable position to assist the world in fighting battles. Yet, the U.S. is promoting fossil fuels that assist excessive heat whilst ignoring fierce battles against climate-induced wildfires throughout the world. Hmm.

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Morocco

“Almounadila socialiste”: Our ecosocialist and feminist alternative to the crisis of capitalist civilization

Saturday 1 August 2026, by Al Mounadil-a

From July 16 to 19, 2026, the headquarters of the newspaper Almounadila socialiste hosted the first edition of “Socialist Days”, a space for political education, strategic reflection and activist exchanges dedicated to the deepening of the revolutionary socialist project.

Organized according to a participatory methodology based on the exchange of experiences, collective discussions and the joint elaboration of analyses, this meeting brought together activists engaged in social struggles in order to strengthen the theoretical and political tools essential for intervention in the current period.

The work focused on the main challenges facing the working class, in its broadest sense, as well as the oppressed peoples, in a context marked by the deepening multidimensional crisis of capitalist civilization, the rise of the new extreme right and reactionary forces, the acceleration of the ecological catastrophe and the generalized offensive against social rights and freedoms.

Faced with this situation, the construction of an ecosocialist, feminist, internationalist and democratic alternative appears more than ever to be a historical necessity.

The training program drew on several fundamental texts of the Fourth International, enriched by discussions on the transformations of contemporary capitalism as well as the political, social and ecological issues facing popular movements. The objective was to better understand the dynamics of the international situation and to draw the consequences for the tasks of revolutionaries, constantly articulating the theoretical elaboration with the concrete experience of the struggles in Morocco and in the region.

The meeting opened with the discussion of the programmatic manifesto of the Fourth International, “Manifesto for an Ecosocialist Revolution – Breaking with Capitalist Growth”. This text shows that extractivist capitalism is leading humanity towards a dead end by destroying ecological balances, depleting natural resources and increasingly subordinating human needs to the logic of profit.

The discussions highlighted the main foundations of the ecosocialist alternative: breaking with capitalist productivism, establishing democratic planning of the economy, respecting the ecological limits of the planet, and redirecting production towards the satisfaction of social needs rather than the private accumulation of capital.

The second session was devoted to the resolution “The new rise of the women’s movement”. The debates focused on the renewal of feminist mobilizations on an international scale, on the perspectives they open up as well as on the challenges they pose to the socialist movement. They reaffirmed that the struggle against patriarchy is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism and all forms of exploitation and oppression. The exchanges also deepened several central notions of socialist feminism, including social reproduction and intersectionality, as tools for analysing relations of domination and developing a strategy of emancipation. Particular attention was paid to the realities of the feminist movement in Morocco and the region.

Another session focused on the resolution “Our orientation and tasks in social movements”. The discussions reaffirmed the need for socialists to contribute to the strengthening of social movements while fully respecting their autonomy, to foster self-organization, grassroots democracy, unity of resistance, and convergence of struggles. The debates also drew on the experience of social movements in Morocco and the region in order to identify their achievements, limitations and strategic lessons.

The Days concluded with the discussion of the resolution “As the crises of capitalism converge, the challenge of how to move forward for those below”. This text analyses the strategic tasks of the socialist movement in a period characterized by the interweaving of economic, social, ecological, geopolitical and democratic crises. It also highlights the contrast between the proliferation of popular resistance around the world and the weakness of a global political alternative, a lasting consequence of the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes of Eastern Europe. The discussions focused on the conditions for the reconstruction of a social and political force capable of carrying out a revolutionary ecosocialist project.

Throughout the Conference, the working method favoured introductory presentations, group workshops, plenary debates and the collective elaboration of summaries. This approach has encouraged the active participation of all activists and a collective enrichment of the texts based on their concrete experiences of struggle.

The Days also reserved an important place for discussions on the political situation in Morocco, the evolutions of the left, the stakes of the next elections and the immediate tasks of militant intervention, with the constant concern to articulate theoretical analysis with concrete political challenges.

Self-management was an essential dimension of this experience. The participants took turns collectively preparing meals, organizing common areas and carrying out the various tasks necessary for daily life in the room. This practice was a political and pedagogical choice: to make training itself a space for experimenting with socialist values, based on equality, shared responsibility, solidarity and the questioning of hierarchical and gendered divisions of work. For revolutionary training does not consist only in the study of texts; it also implies building collective practices that are consistent with the social project that we defend.

This first edition of the Socialist Days confirmed, once again, the urgency of strengthening theoretical and political training in order to understand the transformations of contemporary capitalism and to equip activists with the analytical tools essential to interpreting the world as well as to transforming it. Contributing to the development of the struggles of the working class, women, youth and the entire popular classes, while linking daily struggles to the strategic perspective of overcoming capitalism, remains a central task for all those who campaign for an ecosocialist, democratic and emancipatory society.

The editorial staff of the newspaper Almounadila socialist warmly thanks all the educators, participants and all those who contributed to the success of this initiative. It reaffirms that the Socialist Days are part of a long-term process aimed at deepening theoretical and political training, strengthening militant capacities and bringing the project of revolutionary socialism to life at the heart of social and popular resistance.

Translated by International Viewpoint from lInprecor.

Attached documents

• almounadila-socialiste-our-ecosocialist-and-feminist_a9670.pdf (PDF - 1.6 MiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article9670]

Fourth International

• International Anti-Capitalist Summer Camp
• “In Algeria, what is fundamental is the state”
• Daniel Bensaïd and permanent revolution, old and new questions
• The contribution of the Fourth International to ecosocialism
• Ecosocialism or barbarism

Morocco

• Climate events provoke tensions in the Arab world
• From the Ashes of the Arab Spring
• GenZ 212 movement in Morocco
• Morocco’s Gen Z and the Regional Volcano
• Against state repression and TU leaderships silence: youth movement needs support of working class

• Al Mounadil-a

  Al Mounadil-a is an Arabic-language revolutionary socialist newspaper and website, based in Morocco.

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