No buyers for Aung San Suu Kyi’s villa where she was under house arrest

An auction of the lakeside villa where Myanmar’s detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi spent years under house arrest received no bids, with potential buyers likely deterred by the risk involved.

The two-storey property, which has become emblematic of San Suu Kyi’s long struggle against military rule in the south-east Asian country, was put up for sale with a reserve price of 315 billion kyats (roughly £118 million) at the bequest of the Supreme Court.

Analysts suggested the purchase was too risky, with anyone buying the house likely to be seen as a traitor and possible assassination target.

“Anyone who stepped up to purchase Aung San Suu Kyi’s house under the current circumstances would immediately rise to the top of the Burmese people’s ‘most hated’ list because Suu Kyi is still very popular and is widely seen as the legitimate, democratically elected leader of the country,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

“Given the very real risk of reversal, as well as being targeted by those opposed to the junta, dropping [$150 million] to buy the property looks like a very bad investment.”

World leaders hosted at the colonial-era villa

The auction is the latest twist in a decades-long dispute between the pro-democracy leader and her estranged brother Aung San Oo, who has filed multiple legal claims challenging San Suu Kyi’s ownership of the colonial-era house on a leafy street in Yangon.

But the sale on Wednesday morning attracted only a small crowd – mostly journalists, officials and plainclothes security officers, according to AFP. Wearing a traditional, sarong-like longyi, the auctioneer’s request for bids was met with silence.

“There is no one to bid,” he announced, before striking a bell to close the auction.

The increasingly decrepit house, which sits on 1.9 acres of land, is almost as famous as the Nobel Peace Laureate San Suu Kyi.

Cut off from her husband and children, who were in England, the now 78-year-old was detained inside the house for some 15 years by the junta, having emerged as a leader of the pro-democracy movement during huge demonstrations in 1988.

Later, when San Suu Kyi emerged from house arrest to lead the country, she hosted world leaders at the villa – including Barack Obama, who called her an “icon of democracy”.

Her legacy has been soured by her time in power, when she defended generals against charges of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority. That uneasy power-sharing deal with the military has since disintegrated, with the junta seizing control of Myanmar in a coup in February 2021.

But San Suu Kyi remains hugely popular in her beleaguered country, a status that has likely put off prospective buyers.

“[It is] a lot of money, at a time of economic crisis and where there’s been significant capital flight,” said Richard Horsey, a Myanmar analyst at Crisis Group. “Still, there are some people with the wealth required to purchase it – but there would be huge risks.

“They would immediately become reviled and seen as traitors by much of the country. That would come with the kind of notoriety and reputational damage it would be hard to ever recover from, and it would put a target on the purchaser’s back.”

He added that this risk “is not merely theoretical”, as there a number of high-profile individuals have been assassinated since the coup.

A third factor is the security of the title. The exiled National Unity Government has said they would consider any sale null, while San Suu Kyi’s lawyers have challenged it as they have not been able to meet her for more than a year.

“There is a high chance that under a different political dispensation in the future the transaction would be nullified or the property seized and returned to its rightful owner,” said Mr Horsey.

At the moment, the pro-democracy figurehead is serving 27 years at an undisclosed location, for charges her supporters discount as fabricated.

But as the country’s brutal civil war intensifies, many of those fighting for democracy have largely abandoned San Suu Kyi’s principles of non-violence – instead a plethora of armed resistance groups have emerged, who aim to overthrow the military.