An anti-conscription campaigner told a tribunal he should not be made to serve in the Bermuda Regiment because of the “inevitable” sexual and verbal abuse he would suffer.

Shaki Easton, 27, and three other members of Bermudians Against the Draft (BAD) went before the Exemption Tribunal on Friday with their lawyer arguing that their opposition to the Island’s conscription policy should be enough to excuse them from duty.

Mr Easton, James Famous and brothers Tekle and Seth Ming were ordered to report to Warwick Camp soon after BAD lost its legal bid to get the draft abolished in the Privy Council in May. All four refused to comply and instead applied to be recognised as conscientious objectors, a bona fide grounds for exemption under the Defence Act 1965.

They gave evidence to the Exemption Tribunal at the Anglican Cathedral Hall in Hamilton on Friday, with Mr. Easton, a plumber from St. George’s, explaining why he should be added to the Governor’s register of conscientious objectors.

“My conscience will not allow me to be subjected to the abuse, the inevitable abuse of the Regiment,” he said. “Sexual abuse, verbal abuse.”

Panel chairwoman Cheryl-Ann Mapp told him not everything printed in the newspaper was accurate but Mr Easton replied: “We have evidence that it is accurate.”

He added: “It’s forced labour. It’s wrong. We have been fighting for five years against something that’s totally wrong. I felt this way all along.”

Earlier, Tekle Ming, 28, an air conditioning and refrigeration technician from Hamilton Parish, said he objected to forced labour but did not want to elaborate further. His brother Seth, a 23-year-old heavy machine operator, told the panel: “I strongly believe I should be able to do what I want to do with my time.”

Ms Mapp asked him: “Do you accept that in a job you would have to do certain things?”

He replied he had a choice about whether or not to go to work. “I’m a grown man and what I want to do, I’m going to do it. I choose to go to work and make my hours.”

Mr Famous, 27, said he would undoubtedly suffer verbal abuse as a conscript and there was no way he was prepared to put up with that, just as other citizens wouldn’t tolerate such abuse in their everyday lives.

The mason and sales rep from Pembroke said: “When you sign up for a job...that’s something you agree to for a certain price. With the army you don’t get that choice.”

He said the pay he would receive as a soldier compared poorly to his regular income. “It’s something like $5 a day when you are up there. That’s not going to cut it.”

Eugene Johnston, the men’s attorney, said all four had demonstrated their core belief that conscription was wrong by being members of BAD since its inception five years ago.

Since then, the group has taken its fight to get the draft abolished to the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council in London — failing each time to get the law changed. It is now planning to go to the European Court of Human Rights.

Mr Johnston said their belief would not allow them to perform any duties in the Regiment and for the tribunal to force them to would be to “have them take that belief and toss it out of the window”.

Even if society deemed an army was needed, he said, that “doesn’t justify the conscription policy or the abuse that takes place as a result of the conscription policy”.

He said BAD had gathered documentation and first-hand accounts of sexual and verbal abuse. Mr Johnston said his clients made their application under section 27 of the Defence Act, which deals with conscientious objectors, and that it was tied in to the right to freedom of conscience under the Bermuda Constitution.

The three-member tribunal panel made up of Ms Mapp, Victoria Pearman and Donna Harvey Maybury reserved judgement, advising the men they would be called back at a later date to learn their fates.

In response to questions over the allegations of sexual and verbal abuse as well as the allegations of low pay, a Regiment spokesman said: “We have already answered these questions in the past with your newspaper.”