Owen Wilkes

Owen Ronald Wilkes (1940 – 12 May 2005) was a peace campaigner and the founder of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa and the Anti-Bases Campaign, who was given a suspended prison sentence for espionage in Norway (the Wilkes/Gleditsch trial).

Having suffered bouts of depression all his life, he died by gassing himself in his car on 12 May 2005. He is commemorated by a park bench in Beckenham facing the Heathcote River, near where he grew up.

In 1990 his only child Koa committed suicide while living in Christchurch, contributing to his retirement to Kawhia. After his retirement from the peace movement, he was active in the New Zealand Archaeological Association.

He became politicised in the anti-war movement, which led to invitations to work for the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. These activities led to the 1982 Wilkes/Gleditsch trial in Norway for compiling materials from open sources into materials judged to reveal national secrets. Wilkes received a suspended prison sentence, as well as a fine. On his return to New Zealand from Norway after the trial, he found his Punakaiki house had been pulled down for being erected without a permit. After Wilkes took up beekeeping near Karamea in 1983, it was discovered that Customs was cooperating with the SIS to monitor his international mail. Nothing threatening national security was ever found.

Wilkes was highly visible in New Zealand in the 1970s and '80s as the public face of the peace movement. He campaigned against installations at Black Birch, Mt John and Tangimoana in New Zealand; and links between the New Zealand military and foreign powers.