Pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai said on Thursday he was against violence and had not sought to incite hatred against China and Hong Kong authorities by calling for protests to defend basic rights, speaking in his second day of testimony in a landmark national security trial.

Jimmy Lai, who is charged with national security offenses, testified that his newspaper “carried a torch to the reality” of people’s desire for freedom in the city.

Jimmy Lai, the pugnacious Hong Kong media tycoon whose now shuttered tabloid Apple Daily was a regular thorn in Beijing’s side, took the stand Wednesday in his own defense for the first time in a high stakes national security trial that could send him to prison for life.