Lai was released on bail on Wednesday morning. Speaking to the BBC after his release, he said his arrest “is just the beginning.”
“When he was in custody, he couldn’t sleep,” Lai said. “I thought, if I had known what was going to happen to me now, [with] even more difficulties [along the way], would I have done the same?”
Lai said he has no regrets about his actions, he warned young protesters to be “more careful in our resistance to uphold our rule of law and freedom.”
“We want to be more careful and artistic in [our] resistance matrix … we can’t be as radical as we used to be, especially young people, because the more radical [we] are, the shorter the lifespan of our fights,” Lai said. We want to use our brains and our patience, because it’s a long struggle. “
Lai’s arrest galvanized pro-democracy activists. On Tuesday, the accounts were covered at the city’s kiosks to buy the same newspaper, giving a copy of 10 Hong Kong dollars ($1.25) for the Apple Daily, and press freedom, to survive.
Mass arrests have stoked fears that the new national security law could be used to quell dissent in Hong Kong after months of anti-government protests that rocked city leaders and central government in Beijing last year.
The Apple Daily, known for its media policy and conviction of China’s authoritarian regime, remained provocative, printing 350,000 copies, five times the same flow as before, after police investigators left Next Digital and told workers that they could simply go back to work.
The Associated Press contributed to the report.