Hundreds of Syrians demonstrated in Place de la Republique square in the heart of the French capital under the banner: "No for Assad, no for ISIS".
The demonstration was organized by NGOs to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of the Syrian revolution.
The demonstrators marched towards the municipal headquarters in the French capital, with police estimating the number of protesters at about 700 people.
Demonstrators carried a huge Syrian revolutionary flag, while others sang anti-Syrian regime songs – which spread during the first peaceful demonstrations in Syria – and protesters chanted, "We are all with you. Syrians, hold on".
One of the demonstration’s organizers, Hassan Lababidi, said: "after four years, we want to say that the revolution is going strong. Assad and ISIS are two sides of the same coin, and removing Assad must also lead to the removal of ISIS, too". Another protester stressed, "there will be neither democracy, nor freedom in Syria unless we rid our country of the two-headed monster", a reference to the Syrian president and ISIS.
Ambassador of the Syrian National Coalition in Paris, Munther Makhos, also spoke, and said that "the uprising was entirely peaceful at first, but the regime militarized it, and released about 900 extremists from its prisons to join the jihadist organizations to distort the image of the revolution".
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
