Lance comes from the bush, and has a deep love for the environment and a lot of respect for humanity. He has a deeply ingrained sense of what’s right and wrong, of what’s moral and ethical, and what should be done (Burnt by the Sun, Australian Story, ABC-TV, 25 July 2005.
Transcript, Burnt by the Sun, Australian Story, ABC-TV, 25 July 2005 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-07-25/burnt-by-the-sun/9169464
Lance Collins was the Australian Defence Force’s top military strategist for years and is well versed in the military history of imperial conquests. He has an abiding concern for the fate of small nations whose existence challenges the strategic interests of great powers. He first heard about the Armenian defence of Manzikert against the Turkic invasions while he was attached to the Headquarters of the 3rd US Army in Kuwait in 1992 (during the withdrawal of UN weapons inspectors from Iraq). He describes the siege as ‘the genesis of a genocide’, drawing a direct link between the imperial invasions of the eleventh century and the ‘Armenian Genocide’ by Ottoman government forces early in the twentieth century.
On 13 September 2015, at the West Papua Office in Docklands, on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Collins considered parallels between the behaviour of the Ottoman Government and Indonesia’s genocidal policies in East Timor and West Papua, where he has himself witnessed the long-term consequences of war, persecution and trauma on people’s lives, and the ongoing impacts of what we now call Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. “We need to recognise the truth of what transpires and oppose these crimes, whether against Armenians, East Timorese, or West Papuans,” he said. “Australia is the only country in the world that has actively fostered a military dictatorship on its doorstep.”
FRWP Press Release, 13 Sept 2015
FRWP Media Release, 13 Sept 2015, Lance Collins
Dr Joe Toscano interviews Lance Collins (60 min) 3CR Community Radio, 9 Nov 2015
How foreign states seek to achieve their foreign policy objectives with the Australian Government Lance Collins, 2018, How foreign states achieve their objectives with Canberra
Lance Collins at the Sampari Art Festival for West Papua in 2015, 2016 and 2017
Australian Catholic University Art Gallery, Fitzroy
A Dowry for the Sultan, A tale of the siege of Manzikert 1054
An historical novel by Lance Collins
A Dowry for the Sultan is an exquisitely detailed account of a massacre averted in September 1054 in the predominately Armenian town of Manzikert on the eastern rim of the Byzantine Empire. An invading army of Turkic warriors from the steppes of Central Eurasia, led by the great Seljuk chief Tughrul Bey, are beaten by the civilians of the town in an extraordinary demonstration of courage, imagination, and love. (Seventeen years later, the steppe warriors returned and defeated the armies of the Byzantine Emperor Diogenes, opening up Anatolia, in what is now the Republic of Turkey, to the mass-migration of Turkic herders and their flocks).
Review, A Dowry for the Sultan, by Bishop Hilton Deakin
A Dowry for the Sultan, Review, Bishop Hilton Deakin
Reviews and author’s research-photos of Manzikert
https://www.facebook.com/DowryfortheSultan/
Buy A Dowry for the Sultan ($30)
West Papua Office, 211/838 Collins St, Docklands; frwpwomensoffice@gmail.com
Jill Collins preparatory sketch for her brother’s book
