Bangkok: When Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her non-violent struggle for democracy in Myanmar, residents of Rangoon drove past the high metal gates at her lakeside house and tooted their car horns, the only way to congratulate her.
Soldiers with automatic weapons would swoop on anyone stopping at the gates of the decaying white colonial house where Ms Suu Kyi spent 15 lonely years under house arrest. At brief moments when restrictions were relaxed during her during her long years of confinement, The Lady - as Ms Suu Kyi is known by Burmese - would climb a table behind the gates and greet well-wishers, who clamoured to catch a glimpse of the famous woman and hand her flowers.
Now the yellow-and-red gates that became an enduring symbol of Ms Suu Kyi's fight for democracy are to be auctioned, with the price expected to exceed $200,000. The house's iconic metal plaque number 54 on University Avenue is also to go under the hammer.
Soe Nyunt, a restaurant owner and supporter of Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), says he plans to sell the gates to raise money for construction of the party's new headquarters and for centenary celebrations marking the birth of General Aung San, Ms Suu Kyi's father and the founder of modern Burma, or Myanmar as it is also known.
Mr Soe Nyunt bought the gates when he was landscaping Ms Suu Kyi's house, where since her release she has welcomed world leaders. "They are mine . . . I think the international community will be interested so I will wait some time before personally auctioning them," he said.
Since Ms Suu Kyi's release, Myanmar's quasi-civilian government has opened the country after half a century of often brutal military rule, allowing her to sit in parliament as opposition leader.
But the country's still powerful military has refused to lift a clause in the constitution that bans those with a foreign spouse or children from running for the presidency, blocking Ms Suu Kyi from the position after elections later this year in which the NLD is expected to poll strongly. Ms Suu Kyi's two sons are British, as was her late husband.
There is informed speculation that Ms Suu Kyi, 67, will instead seek the position of speaker of parliament.
Ms Suu Kyi, her mother and other family members moved into the house on University Avenue in 1953. For years the building could only be seen from 300 metres away on the other side of Inya Lake.
Mr Soe Nyunt is spruiking the sale of the gates as a rare opportunity. "If this great door can speak, it can narrate about the history of Burmese democracy combat for 25 years," he wrote on his Facebook page.
with AFP
