No bidders yesterday appeared at a court-ordered auction of the family home of Myanmar’s imprisoned former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, where she had been held under house arrest for nearly 15 years, legal officials said.
Many in Myanmar view the house as a historical landmark of Aung San Suu Kyi’s nonviolent struggle against military rule for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize.
A court in January ordered the house and 0.78-hectare property in Yangon to be sold with a minimum price of 315 billion kyats (US$150.2 million), with the proceeds to be split between Aung San Suu Kyi and her estranged older brother. Her lawyers had challenged the auction order.
Photo: AP
The auction was held in front of the closed gates of the lakeside property, which has served as an unofficial party headquarters and a political shrine for the country’s pro-democracy movement. While living there, Aung San Suu Kyi hosted visiting dignitaries including former US president Barack Obama, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 78, is serving a 27-year prison sentence in a series of cases brought by the military, which seized power from her elected government in February 2021.
Her supporters and independent analysts say the cases are an attempt to discredit her and legitimize the military’s seizure of power.
“I want to announce that the auction is unsuccessful as there is no bidder,” a district court official who did not identify herself announced outside the gate.
A man by her side struck a small gong, and a second man said: “The auction event has ended.”
A lawyer familiar with the legal proceedings, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information, said the court would continue to handle the case, but the details are not yet known.
The court-ordered auction followed a bitter decades-long legal dispute between Aung San Suu Kyi and her brother, Aung San Oo, who has sought an equal division of the property.
Aung San Oo first sued in 2000 for a partition of the property, but his complaint was dismissed in January 2001 on procedural grounds. He returned to court repeatedly over the following two decades to press his claims.
In August 2022, after the army seized power, the Supreme Court decided to have the property sold by auction.
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