The lakeside mansion where Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi spent years under house arrest was put up for auction for a second time on Thursday but once again attracted no bids, AFP correspondents reported.
The two-storey house and 1.9 acres of land were put up for sale following a decades-long property dispute between the Nobel laureate – who has been detained since the 2021 military coup – and his brother.
The minimum amount for bidding in the auction was set at 300 billion kyat – equivalent to approximately US$140 million at the junta’s official exchange rate of 2,100 kyat per dollar.
A local real estate agent told AFP in March that similar-sized properties in posh areas of Yangon could sell for around one or two million dollars.
Before the auction, a small crowd of mostly journalists gathered outside the colonial-era home on leafy University Avenue, just blocks from the U.S. Embassy.
A portrait of Suu Kyi’s father, independence hero Aung San, hung above the gate, watching over the proceedings, while armed police stood guard behind sandbags.
“The buildings and all inheritances are in the name of Suu Kyi’s mother, Daw Khin Kyi,” read a notice pasted on the door by the local court.
An auctioneer came out to the premises and asked three times if there were any buyers, then declared the auction unsuccessful when no buyer came forward.
Suu Kyi, who rose to fame after leading massive protests against the then junta in 1988, was confined within the crumbling walls of the house by the military for nearly 15 years.
Separated from her husband and children in England, Suu Kyi spent her time playing the piano, reading detective novels and meditating as her status as a democratic leader grew.
Hundreds of people regularly gathered on the sidewalk outside the estate to hear him talk about fighting military rule through democracy and nonviolence.
After her release in 2010, she continued to live in the same villa, where she was received by many foreign leaders, journalists and diplomats.
In 2012, then-US President Barack Obama hailed her as an “icon of democracy” during a visit to her home.
Suu Kyi left Yangon in 2012 and moved to the capital, Naypyidaw, to rule under an uneasy power-sharing arrangement with the military.
He was detained there on the morning of Feb. 1, 2021, after the military re-seized power, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy and plunging the Southeast Asian nation into bloody turmoil.