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BANGKOK (AP) — No bidders appeared at a court-ordered auction Wednesday 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.
A court in January ordered the house and 1.9-acre (0.78-hectare) property in Yangon be sold with a minimum price of 315 billion kyats ($90 million), with the proceeds to be split between Suu Kyi and her estranged older brother. Suu Kyi’s lawyers had challenged the auction order.
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, Suu Kyi hosted visiting dignitaries including U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
“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.”
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.
The Supreme Court decided in August 2022, after the army seized power, to have the property sold by auction.
She remained there after her 2010 release until moving in 2012 to the capital, Naypyitaw, to serve in Parliament. She became the nation’s leader after a 2015 general election.
Early this month, Suu Kyi’s legal team filed an appeal at Yangon Region High Court requesting that the order to sell the house be amended because Suu Kyi did not seem to know about the auction and had not been allowed to meet and give instructions to her lawyers about it.
Khin Kyi died in December 1988, shortly after the failure of a mass uprising against military rule in which Suu Kyi was a leader and co-founder of the National League for Democracy party. She was detained in 1989 ahead of a 1990 election which her party easily won but was not allowed to take power when the army annulled the results.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army’s 2021 takeover, which led to nationwide peaceful protests that the military government suppressed with deadly force, triggering widespread armed resistance that is widely characterized as a civil war.