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There may also be a more personal motivation for the generals. Burmese military rulers often meet with untimely or ignominious demises. The founder of the Burmese army, General Aung San (father of Aung San Suu Kyi), was assassinated in 1947 just months before the independence from Britain he had fought so hard to achieve. General Ne Win, who seized power in 1962 and ruled Burma for more than a quarter of a century, saw his family charged with plotting to overthrow the government in 2002. Though the aged ruler had officially retired, his son-in-law and three grandsons were imprisoned, and he and his favorite daughter were placed under house arrest. Other top generals have had similarly miserable fates and few have been able to retire peacefully. The Burmese use the phrase wut leh deh—which means something akin to “what goes around comes around”—to explain this inescapable cycle of karmic retribution.