In September 2007, Buddhist monks, students, democracy campaigners, and ordinary men, women, and children took their lives into their hands in the streets of Yangon, Myanmar, to protest against the ruling military regime. The protests had begun a month earlier with peaceful calls by the monks for the ruling authorities to reinstate subsidies on fuel and oil and alleviate crippling commodity prices, but quickly snowballed into mass demonstrations for democratic and social reforms and the release of all political prisoners.