A sweater hand-knit by democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi sold for
$49,000 Thursday night at a fundraising auction in Burma’s commercial
capital Rangoon.
The red, green and blue V-neck, whose initial bidding price was
$6,000,was sold at an event organized by Suu Kyi’s National League for
Democracy party. A Burmese radio station won the bidding war for the
sweater, the Associated Press reported.
(PHOTOS: Aung San Suu Kyi’s Path to Victory, by James Nachtwey)
Forty-nine thousand dollars is a lot of money in one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia; it’s equivalent to about 23 years of income for
a local taxi driver (although he probably wouldn’t need the sweater in a
city where temperatures rarely drop below 70 degrees Fahrenheit). The
money will be used to pay for the education of children in need, the
organizers said.
The 67-year old Nobel Peace laureate is famous in Burma as the
daughter of modern Burma’s founding father Aung San and because of her
unrelenting struggle to bring democracy to the country until very
recently ruled by a military junta.
Suu Kyi spent much of the past two decades under house arrest, but
has emerged as a powerful political figure following Burma’s recent
political thaw. With astrologers and
not a few other observers predicting that she could someday lead the
country of 48 million people, the auction’s massive proceeds might also
reflect efforts by the country’s leading tycoons to curry favor. The
auction itself was sponsored
by one of Burma’s richest men, Tay Za, an airline operator and former
close ally to Senior General Than Shwe, head of Burma’s junta from 1992
to 2011.
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