Suu Kyi sibling wants to sell site of house arrest
The crumbling lakeside villa that served as Aung San Suu Kyi’s prison for 15 years during her house arrest has become the source of a bitter family dispute between the Myanmar state counsellor and her brother.
Suu Kyi’s estranged older brother, Aung San Oo, an engineer who lives in the United States, has submitted an appeal at the supreme court, petitioning for the auction of the home and a share of the proceeds.
While the two-storey villa has long fallen into disrepair, Oo’s lawyer said it was valued at US$90 million (NZ$136.5m).
The colonial-style house at 54 University Avenue on the shores of Yangon’s Inya Lake has gained revered status. The strip of land was given by the government to Suu Kyi’s mother, Khin Kyi, after her husband, the independence hero General Aung San, was assassinated in 1947. Khin Kyi died in 1988, when Suu Kyi was living in the property and nursing her.
From that point on, for almost two decades, the property was the hub of Suu Kyi’s then-dissident political party, the National League of Democracy (NLD).
It became a familiar site on weekend afternoons to see Suu Kyi climb up on a fence or a rickety table outside the dilapidated house and make speeches promoting free speech and democracy to crowds of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people.
The property, which was once one of Yangon’s most luxurious homes, was kept bare, dark and austere by Suu Kyi during her time living there under house arrest, and she sold most of her parents’ furniture to pay for food.
In 2012, it was through the gates of the villa that US President Barack Obama historically drove to meet Suu Kyi, accompanied by then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who rushed to emotionally embrace Suu Kyi in the driveway.
Suu Kyi has not lived in the house since her release in 2012.
The legal action is not the first time Oo has made a claim on the family estate. He first sued Suu Kyi for the property in 2000, when she was still being detained there by the military. The case was initially thrown out by the courts, but he then filed a new claiming joint ownership.
In 2016, after another dispute, a Yangon court ruled that Suu Kyi owned the main house, while another building on the property and some of the surrounding land belonged to her brother.
However, he is now disputing that ruling as ‘‘biased’’.
‘‘They gave her more than half, and so I am not satisfied and I am asking this right now,’’ Oo told Reuters. ‘‘I already let her live [there] for free for 12 years. There is a limitation.’’
Speaking to reporters outside the court where he filed the petition, he added: ‘‘The money earned from putting the house and compound up for auction would be divided equally between us.’’
He claimed that the building he had been given in the 2016 settlement had ‘‘collapsed’’ and was unliveable, unlike the main villa given to his younger sister.
Suu Kyi’s reputation as a beacon of democracy and free speech has been severely diminished over the past year in the wake of the ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Rahkine state and the imprisonment of journalists, though in Myanmar she still commands fierce loyalty.
Nyi Nyi, a member of the NLD and of the Yangon regional parliament, said he would raise money to fight Oo in court. ‘‘This will become a historic place,’’ he said.
– Guardian News & Media suit,