Niskayuna resident heading to Taiwan for conference on nation controlled by China
By DAN HIGGINS
WOODSTOCK – At 13, Amalia Rubin read horror stories about what happens to Tibetan dissidents captured by the Chinese government. They are thrown in prison, frequently tortured, and their families are harassed.
The stories moved her to get involved.
By the time she was 17, her mother Alice sometimes found her curled up late at night on the kitchen floor of the family’s Niskayuna home, cradling a telephone in her ear, fumbling through a Tibetan phrase book. On the other line were panicked Tibetan asylum seekers, adults who were strangers to the young woman, lost in American bureaucracy, who got her number through mutual friends and who were now turning to her for help.
“Sometimes all I could tell them (in the Tibetan language) was ‘Seriously, I do not speak Tibetan.’ ”
She does now. She learned the language because of her growing involvement in the student Tibetan freedom movement. At 19, she’s a steady veteran.
She’s taken her passion and experience with her this month to Taiwan, where she is one of just seven American delegates to the World Youth Care for Tibet Forum, an international gathering meant to foster ties with the nation whose government-in-exile is led by the Dalai Lama.
She was invited through her activity in the group Students for a Free Tibet. Rubin founded a chapter of the group while attending the Emma Willard School in Troy. She remained active as she began college, studying Asian languages at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, Ontario County. She will continue to study Asian languages when she transfers to the State University at Buffalo this year.
Rubin said the conference is a way for student activists to meet each other and express solidarity for both Tibet and Taiwan.
“One of the reasons it’s in Taiwan is for the Taiwanese to show solidarity with Tibet. To show that Taiwan can look like Tibet if China ever invades,” she said. Tibet was taken over by China in 1959. Thousands of Tibetans were killed, monasteries were destroyed and religious leaders fled.
Taiwan, of course, is also in a precarious position. China considers it a rogue province, but the island is a semiautonomous democracy. American support of Taiwan is a source of tension between the U.S. and China.
Many Taiwanese look to Tibet as a kindred nation and as a study in what could happen. Rubin has taken on Tibet’s cause as her own and not as a passing fad.
“This is her passion and she’s serious about it and she has remained serious about it,” said her mother, Alice Rubin, 54.
She said it took some getting used to that her daughter was becoming sought-after by Tibetan activists and runaway monks.
“But I’ve never had to worry about her,” she said. “She’s doing something good and worthwhile.”
Rubin said it was her neighbors who inspired her early fascination with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. Willard and Laura Roth’s home is decorated with Tibetan art, which first fueled Rubin’s fascination with Tibetan culture. And the couple — they are both retired college professors — direct a Tibetan Buddhist center in Albany. For decades, monks and lamas visiting from around the world have come to stay with them.
Often, some members of a lama’s entourage would stay next door with the Rubins.
“And Amalia, with her curiosity, would manage to meet them all,” said Willard Roth, 81.
The branch of Tibetan Buddhism practiced by the Roths is called kagyu, and its leader is known as the 17th Karmapa. The Karmapa founded the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra monastery in Woodstock in 1974, and Rubin has visited many times with her family, with the Roths, and on her own. On a recent visit, she said that her immersion in Tibetan culture and political issues began with her own fascination and has remained strong because of the ties she’s forged with Tibetan people.
“When someone asks you for help,” she said, “you know what to do.”
