Over the past two decades, four of my friends have been assassinated. I know still more who have received death threats or survived attempts on their lives.The first death came on Valentine’s Day in 2008. Two gunmen came to the home of Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan, general-secretary of one of Myanmar’s largest ethnic resistance groups. Mahn Sha – a civilian political leader, not a military man – was killed on the veranda where I had sat with him only three days earlier. As a result of my human rights work, I had come to know him quite well, visiting...