The auctioning of the imprisoned leader’s Yangon house at the behest of her estranged brother is a legal farce, lawyers say, while pro-democracy veterans insist it must be preserved for public memory.
By FRONTIER
Once ubiquitous as Myanmar’s state counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi disappeared from public life on February 1, 2021. On that day, the military seized power from the civilian government led by her political party, the National League for Democracy, and arrested her at her residence in Nay Pyi Taw, the city where she had lived since entering parliament in 2012.
Today, she sits in a specially-built building at a prison in the capital, and is routinely denied requests for visitors and barred from meeting her lawyers. Meanwhile, the military junta persecutes members of her party, which is barred from contesting an election planned for this year, and works hard to undo her political legacy.
This legacy, her supporters say, includes a defiant democratic culture – evident in the mass opposition to the 2021 coup – as well as an unofficial monument in the form of her old Yangon home. The house, which sits on the south shore of Inya Lake, is affectionately nicknamed “Power 54” – a reference to its well-known address, 54 University Avenue Road.
Under the previous military regime, Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010 under house arrest at this Yangon residence, which once belonged to her mother, and would deliver speeches to adoring members of the public from its walls.
Three years after she was elected to parliament, her party won the 2015 election. As de facto head of government, she spent less and less time in Yangon, but the house remained a popular tourist attraction. It was decorated with the NLD’s fighting peacock logo, as well as a photo of Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, General Aung San, who had helped forge Myanmar’s independence from the United Kingdom but who was assassinated by political rivals in 1947, when his daughter was two years old.
Visitors would take photographs with the police patrolling the entrance, obliging with smiles and good humour. But their attitude has soured considerably since the coup. Police now stand guard with guns and prevent anyone from approaching too closely. The NLD logo is gone, and the iron door is rusted and in need of new paint.
Serving a 27-year prison sentence on a range of trumped-up charges, the 79-year-old may never again see her old home. But, even if she were released, the guards may bar her at the gate.
Two months after her sentencing in June 2022, following more than a year of pretrial detention, a longstanding lawsuit about ownership of the property was finally decided in favour of her older brother, U Aung San Oo. According to the judgment, the property would be auctioned to the highest bidder and the proceeds split evenly between the two siblings.
Legal wrangling
The property at 54 University Avenue Road encompasses 0.8 hectares (1.97 acres) and includes a two-storey house and a smaller outbuilding. Ownership is currently under the name of Daw Khin Kyi, the mother of Aung San Suu Kyi and Aung San Oo.
Khin Kyi died in 1988, but Aung San Oo didn’t file a lawsuit until 2000, at which time Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the residence. Legal proceedings dragged on until 2016, when the Western Yangon District Court ruled that the residence was to be shared between the siblings – Aung San Suu Kyi would become owner of the main house and half of the land, while the outbuilding and the rest of the land would belong to Aung San Oo.
Dissatisfied with being awarded the secondary building instead of the main house, Aung San Oo appealed to the Supreme Court in 2018, petitioning for the property to be auctioned and the proceeds evenly split. The appeal was rejected.
He then made a special appeal to the chief justice in 2019. After a long delay due to COVID-19 and the coup, the court under the new junta finally ruled in favour of Aung San Oo in 2022.
Kamaryut Township Court subsequently arranged for the auction to take place on the street outside the home. So far, three have been held: the first with a floor price of K315 billion (US$70.8 million at the current market rate) and the second at K300 billion in March and August last year respectively. The most recent, held on February 5, was set at K297 billion. None of the auctions attracted any bidders. On February 27, U Aung San Oo filed a request for the court to further reduce the reserve auction price to K270 billion.
While the idea of the auction and the equal splitting of the proceeds has a firm basis in Myanmar law, legal experts question the legality of the junta court’s procedures.
One legal expert in Yangon said courts make decisions about inheritance-related issues using the Burma Laws Act of 1898 and Aung San Oo and Aung San Suu Kyi have equal rights to receive inheritance from their parents.
“Aung San Oo was born from Buddhist parents, so he and his sister must share the inheritance equally,” the legal expert said. He was referring to separate provisions in the Burma Laws Act for people of different religions. While Muslim, Christian and Hindu parents are permitted to write wills to pass property on to others after death, Buddhists are not allowed to do so – the inheritance automatically passes to their children, who must divide it equally among themselves.
“When Buddhists divide their inheritance, they usually invite elders they respect as witnesses. After calculating all the assets, one sibling might take the house, while others take other assets like heirlooms. After everyone is satisfied, they usually sign a contract in front of witnesses. It’s only when there’s a dispute over immovable property like houses that they go to court,” he said.
If the court determines that an auction is necessary, the sibling who first brought the lawsuit names a price for the property. Other siblings can pay that price and become full owners of the property, or they can proceed with the auction and split the proceeds evenly after the sale.
Once an auction is decided on, the court sets the floor price based on suggestions from all parties concerned.
However, according to a source close to the Kamaryut Township Court, Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers have objected to every submission by Aung San Oo because the court has not allowed them to consult with their client since the coup.
“Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers have repeatedly asked to meet with their client, but the court has dismissed all of their requests,” the court source told Frontier. “They can’t suggest a floor price without consulting with Aung San Suu Kyi, so they have objected to all the submissions of the opposing lawyers.”
It is therefore likely that the first auction’s floor price of K315 billion was based solely on the recommendation of Aung San Oo and his lawyers. For the second auction, Aung San Oo suggested K290 billion, but the court set it at K300 billion.
“I think the court is only gradually lowering the price because they don’t want to be seen as giving Aung San Oo whatever he demands. But they’ll keep lowering the price until there’s a bidder,” said U Kyee Myint, a former political prisoner and chair of the Union Lawyers and Legal Aid Board, which was forced to disband after the coup.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s legal team consists of three lawyers – Daw San Malar Nyunt, U Kyaw Sein Lwin and U Than Lwin – who lack the experience to mount a strong case in court, he explained to Frontier.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi originally hired lawyer U Kyi Win for the case, but he passed away in 2018. These young lawyers were part of his team, and when he died, they continued working on the case. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has had no chance to hire new lawyers,” he said.
Kyee Myint said the inability of Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers to consult with their client meant that the court’s procedures were illegal.
“If the plaintiff is in prison, lawyers must be allowed to visit the prison. Without such permission and without the consent of the plaintiff, the lawyer is not allowed to do anything,” he said.
“If the lawyer is not satisfied with the decision of the court, he can only appeal with the signature of the plaintiff. Without the signature of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the lawyer cannot appeal. So, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is losing all of her legal rights.”
Sibling feud?
While Aung San Oo is legally entitled to an equal share of the property, some observers wonder whether the brother’s persistence over the past 25 years might have its roots in a longstanding feud between him and his more famous sister.
Aung San Oo and Aung San Suu Kyi spent their childhoods together in Myanmar, then called Burma, but took different paths as teenagers and have lived apart ever since. Aung San Oo attended Imperial College London in the UK, and then moved to the United States and became a citizen there.
Aung San Suu Kyi, meanwhile, spent time in India, where Khin Kyi served as ambassador in the 1960s, then moved to the UK to attend the University of Oxford. She married British citizen Michael Aris, a scholar of Tibet at the university, in 1972 and they settled in Oxford.
Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar in 1988 to care for her ailing mother, a visit that serendipitously coincided with the eruption of pro-democracy protests and dictator General Ne Win stepping down from power to be replaced by a new military junta. Aung San Suu Kyi was abruptly thrust into the spotlight as the leader of the movement.
Ma Thida (Sanchaung), an author and former political prisoner who worked closely with Aung San Suu Kyi in 1988, said people at that time initially expected that Aung San Oo, then working as an engineer in California, would return to Myanmar and lead the democracy movement instead of Aung San Suu Kyi.
“During the 1988 uprising, there were rumours that Aung San Oo might bring the US military into the country. These were really arbitrary ideas. In reality, we saw that he had no interest in the public, no sympathy for the public, no thoughts about matters other than his own family,” she said.
However, in his 2011 book Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Struggle for Democracy, journalist Bertil Lintner describes how, during the 1988 protests, Aung San Oo formed the Free Myanmar Front with Myanmar immigrants to the US. Lintner also wrote that Aung San Oo published a 42-page pamphlet outlining a path to democracy, in which he warned against false leaders who manipulate the feelings of the Myanmar people, and who talk big but do little. It is not clear whether this was a reference to Aung San Suu Kyi.
Another journalist, Peter Popham, wrote in his 2011 biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, The Lady and the Peacock, that Aung San Oo sent a letter to Myanmar students in Tokyo in 1988 saying he stood firmly with the pro-democracy movement in his home country. In July of that year, protestors put up posters around Yangon expressing their expectation that Aung San Oo would return. “He will return and lead us. He is the one we are waiting for,” the posters read.
It was rumoured that Aung San Oo was denied a visa to travel to Myanmar during the protests, although Frontier could not confirm this. However, he later visited the country when Khin Kyi died in December 1988. By this time, the public had already embraced his sister as their champion, although the military had crushed the protests in September.
Ma Thida said she noticed that the relationship between the siblings was cold even at their mother’s funeral, and Aung San Oo seemed like he didn’t want to interact with others. “When he parked his car under the portico at the house, his sister didn’t come out to welcome him. It was obvious that they were uncomfortable with each other,” she said.
After 1988, Aung San Oo seemed to lose interest in Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, and later appeared to develop ties with senior military officials during trips back to the country. In 2003, photographs circulated of junta first secretary General Khin Nyunt and his wife attending Aung San Oo’s ordination ceremony as a monk in Bagan, the site of a former Bamar kingdom in present-day Mandalay Region.
Also in Bagan, Aung San Oo had a riverside villa built around 2005, raising suspicion of special favours from the regime. He also attended official Martyrs’ Day ceremonies in Yangon, to commemorate the death of his father and other independence heroes, as a special guest of the junta. Given that Aung San Suu Kyi’s initial public appeal stemmed from her status as Aung San’s daughter, her brother’s Martyrs’ Day visits seemed to many like an act of counter propaganda.
Frontier could not reach Aung San Oo for comment or determine his present whereabouts, and calls to the phone of his lawyer U Aye Lwin went unanswered.
National heritage
Many veterans of the pro-democracy movement harbour fond memories of Aung San Suu Kyi’s house, viewing it as a precious monument to the long struggle against military rule.
U Nay Tin Myint was a leading member of the NLD’s central youth committee when he visited Aung San Suu Kyi with two other student leaders in 1988. He was 20 years old and a final-year student of the University of Yangon.
“We had never met Aung San Suu Kyi before. Honestly, we had our doubts about her before we met because she had lived abroad for so long, but when we talked to her, we were impressed because she knew more about Burma than we did,” he said.
“We met her two or three times, and our student group provided security when she made her first public speech at Shwedagon Pagoda [on August 26, 1988]. After that I lived at the 54 residence for a year without returning home, and became one of her biggest fans.”
Nay Tin Myint, who was arrested in 1989 and spent 16 years in prison for his role in the NLD, said he felt heaviness in his heart when he heard that the junta court was allowing the house to be auctioned.
“But when I heard there were no bidders, I was glad. We want to see 54 University Avenue maintained as a historical site for the public’s benefit after the revolution,” he said.
U Kyaw Zaw, a spokesperson for the National Unity Government, a parallel administration established by elected lawmakers ousted in the 2021 coup, also welcomed the failure of the auctions. He said the NUG would take legal action against anyone seeking to own, sell, destroy, alter or otherwise use the property. In September 2022, the NUG declared that the residence was a national cultural heritage site.
“The 54 residence is an important symbol of the struggle against military dictatorship and the struggle to build a democratic system. It belongs to the entire nation, and it is the historical heritage of the entire country. No one has the right to sell the house or own it,” Kyaw Zaw told Frontier.
Ma Thida said the regime would like the house at 54 University Avenue Road to disappear from public memory.
“Money is not the issue for them. Once the land is sold, the buyer will renovate it as they like. They will destroy the historical monument,” she said. “They hate the fact that people are still focused on the house even though the owner doesn’t live there anymore. I think they just want to destroy the memories of the people.”
