YANGON, Myanmar — A renewed attempt to auction off the family home of Myanmar’s imprisoned former leader Aung San Suu Kyi was unsuccessful Wednesday as the prospect of paying tens of millions of dollars for a property in a country embroiled in a civil war failed to attract any bidders.
It was the third attempt to sell the lakeside property where Suu Kyi had been held under house arrest for nearly 15 years. It’s widely viewed as a historical landmark of her nonviolent struggle against military rule for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the previous attempt at auction last August, the court-ordered asking price was $142 million; on Wednesday it was reduced by $1 million, to $141 million.
Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government was ousted by the military in February 2021. She is now serving a combined 27-year sentence after being convicted of a string of criminal charges that supporters say have been fabricated to discredit her.
Since then, resistance to the military government has grown and the country is now in the midst of a brutal civil war.
The court-ordered auction followed a bitter decades-long legal dispute between Suu Kyi and her brother, Aung San Oo, who has sought an equal division of the property.
Each time the house has gone up for auction its price has been reduced, but there has yet to be a bidder.
In March, the asking price was 315 billion kyats, about $150 million at official rates, and the second was in August with 300 billion kyats, more than $142 million.
On Wednesday, the opening asking price for the 1.9-acre (0.78-hectare) lakeside property in Yangon was set at 297 billion kyats. That’s about $141 million at official rates, or about $66 million at black-market rates, which better reflect the real value of the kyat.
Wednesday’s auction was held in front of the closed gates of the 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.
Like the previous auctions, it took less than a minute for a district court official to emerge and announce there had been no bidders and end the proceedings.
“The auction is unsuccessful as there is no bidder,” the official, who did not identify herself, announced outside the gate.
The two-story colonial-style building on Inye Lake in Yangon, the country’s largest city, was given decades ago by the government to Suu Kyi’s mother, Khin Kyi, after her husband, independence hero Gen. Aung San, was assassinated in July 1947.
Suu Kyi, 79, remained there after her 2010 release from house arrest until moving in 2012 to the capital, Naypyitaw, to serve in parliament. She became the nation’s leader after a 2015 general election.
According to legal procedures, the court will continue to handle the auction process, but the details are not yet known.
