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Shkruar nga Pamfleti
In a message in English addressed to international media, Rama claims that the protest did not exceed 8,000 people, while the footage he published was filmed before the full arrival of the protesters in front of the Prime Minister's Office.
While thousands of citizens filled the boulevard in front of the Prime Minister's Office and the protest spread to several cities in the country, Prime Minister Edi Rama chose to address the international public with a lengthy response in English, where he tried to minimize the scale of the mobilization and the coverage the protests have received in the world media. Rama used images from his own media outlets, trying to show that the protest has no support.
In his post, published in English and addressed to international media, including CNN, Rama claims that Saturday's protest only gathered around 2,000 people and that at no point did it exceed the figure of 8,000 participants.
" Up to this point, today's protest has gathered approximately 2,000 participants. It is the lowest turnout so far, but even at its peak, participation has never exceeded 8,000 people. So how is it possible that what the world has seen in recent days seems so big, so dramatic and so impressive? At a moment when the digital hysteria of these days has passed and emotions have calmed down, the democratic world must analyze how the gap between reality and the way it has been presented became so large ," Rama wrote.
However, the footage released by the prime minister does not show the moment when the protest reached its peak. The drone video was taken at a time when many citizens were still marching towards the Prime Minister's Office and when other groups were continuously joining the rally. A little later, the area in front of the government building was filled with protesters, while the rally continued for hours.
In another part of the message, Rama expressed surprise at the way the protest has become international news, suggesting that reality has been distorted by the media and social networks.
" How could a small country become global news for reasons so disconnected from reality on the ground? How could a local protest with a few thousand people turn into an international spectacle? How could assumptions turn into facts, narratives into verdicts, and speculations into accepted truths before the basic facts were established? And perhaps most importantly, what does this say about our information ecosystem when perception can travel around the world faster than reality itself? ", the prime minister said.
The head of government went even further, claiming that the echo of the protest has been artificially inflated by social networks and anonymous profiles.
" From this simple situation arose a hurricane of digital hysteria, apocalyptic headlines, artificially produced anger and general conclusions presented as proven facts. Along the way there were manipulated images, fabricated claims, anonymous networks and online behavior that bear many of the characteristics of hybrid information warfare. A significant part of the increase in activity on social networks seems to have been driven not by the organic expansion of public participation, but by the rapid spread of new profiles, anonymous accounts and pages with no identifiable history ," Rama declared.
The prime minister's reaction comes at a time when the protest has spread beyond Tirana and has spread to several cities in the country, while it has also received support from the Albanian diaspora in London, Vienna, Milan, Berlin and other European cities. For many protesters, the fact that Rama chose to address international media in English is an indication that the attention the protest has received abroad is increasingly worrying the government.
To @CNN International and to all the endless media outlets, big and small, together with all the well-meaning content producers of Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and every other platform that now shapes the global conversation, I would very much wish to pass the following post:… pic.twitter.com/yFEQepcoH0
— Edi Rama (@ediramaal) June 6, 2026
Ky eshte i semure dhe fluturon me presh ne bythe
Rama nuk eshte mire nga numurimi, aq me teper per numrat mbi 1 milion qe ishin ne bulevard. Jo 1, por 1.342,767 protestues ishin mbreme ne bulevard.