Shadowing Practice: Why nobody stopped the Rwandan genocide - Learn English Speaking with Video
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We're on our way to a local hospital in Kigali in 1994.
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In the cars are around 90
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Belgian paratroopers and a handful of foreign journalists.
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Further up the road, they can see men armed with machetes in front of them.
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They let them pass.
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A moment later, they reach the hospital hospital.
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As they approach, people start running out towards them with their hands raised.
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They explain to the soldiers that the men with machetes have surrounded them, and that some of them have been murdered.
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The people hiding in the hospital are Tutsis, an ethnic minority in Rwanda.
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The people outside are Hutus, the ethnic majority.
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For decades, the Tutsis have been persecuted in Rwanda.
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And when the Hutu president was killed a few days ago, Hutu extremists put the blame on the Tutsis.
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The massacre sparked by the death of Rwanda's president, Juvenal Habya Ramana, a Hutu in a suspicious plane crash.
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Now, the president's successor, Zhang Kambanda, wants to purge Kigali of Tutsis.
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And he's already begun.
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The Tutsis here, though, have been saved.
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They've been hiding here for three days.
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And now, finally, it's over.
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But the soldiers aren't here to help any Rwandans.
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Instead, they walk past the crowd and bring out the Westerners also hiding at the hospital and then they leave.
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As the soldiers and journalists reach their trucks, they hear gunfire from behind them.
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The Hutus from outside have started killing the people at the hospital.
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The Rwandan genocide has begun.
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For the past few days, Hutu extremists have been searching homes, workplaces and schools in Kigali for Tutsis to execute,
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for no other reason than them being Tutsi.
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Already, more than 20 ,000 Rwandans have been killed.
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And now, the extremist Hutu leaders have started the next phase of their plan, to spread the killing across all of Rwanda.
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Through radio broadcasts and local newspapers, they tell Hutus that the Tutsis are foreign invaders who want to turn them into slaves.
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Their propaganda reminds them that the Tutsis had once ruled them for centuries and had viewed Hutus as an inferior people.
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The propaganda works.
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Hutu civilians from villages across Rwanda start joining local militias by the thousands.
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Afraid of being seen as protecting Tutsis, families even begin pointing out their neighbours to the killers.
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The punishment for sheltering Tutsis, men, women or children, is death.
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Some Hutu extremists have even started referring to Tutsi survivors as those not yet finished off.
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in northern Rwanda Tutsi rebels have started to push back
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but progress is slow as they move down
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they find evidence of massacres of entire families in village after
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village in the first two weeks of the genocide more than
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100 ,000 Rwandans are killed by the end of the first month that number is closer to 300 ,000.
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But despite getting daily reports on the thousands of massacres happening across the country each day,
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the UN Security Council has decided to implement a non -intervention policy.
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We're going to go now to Mogadishu, Somalia, where there is a news story unfolding of a very different kind,
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a US soldier apparently taken prisoner or hostage.
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Six months ago, during a On a mission in Somalia, 18 American soldiers were on patrol in Mogadishu when they were killed by Somalian rebels.
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Pictures of their bodies being dragged through the streets ran for days on American TV.
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Another disaster in Africa could make it seem like
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President Clinton's out of his depth on his foreign policy.
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And so, the US, along with the rest of the UN Security Council, votes to withdraw 90 % of its peacekeeping force in Rwanda.
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The few hundred peacekeepers still left will need to defend thousands of refugees hiding at the safe havens in Kigali.
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Some posts have a dozen soldiers, others have as little as two.
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Most of them are unarmed.
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If the Hutus that now control most of Rwanda should decide to attack one of their shelters, the peacekeepers would be defenceless.
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Comment on that or a view as to whether or not what is happening could be genocide.
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Well, as I think you know, the use of the term genocide has a very precise legal meaning, although it's not strictly a legal determination.
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There are other factors in there as well.
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when in looking at a situation to make a determination about that before we begin to use that term,
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we have to know as much as possible about the facts of the situation.
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Six weeks into the genocide, with more than half a million Tutsis dead, the US refuses to acknowledge it.
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Doing so would oblige them, along with all other UN members, to prevent it, according to the 1948 Genocide Convention.
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Instead, the US administration introduces
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Presidential Decision Directive 25,
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a policy that makes it even harder for the US to support UN missions that don't serve vital national interests.
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The question of our security in this era still ultimately depends
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upon our decisions about where to bring our military power to bear.
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The end of the superpower standoff lifted the lid from a cauldron of long -simmering hatreds.
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Now the entire global terrain is bloody with such conflicts from Rwanda to Georgia.
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Whether we get involved in any of the world's ethnic conflicts
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in the end must depend on the cumulative weight of the American interests at stake.
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Rwanda is of no interest to America.
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It is, in every sense, a conflict with no strategic value.
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Only after the Tutsi rebels take most of eastern Rwanda, and after weeks of daily reports from journalists, aid workers and the Red Cross,
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does it become impossible for the UN Security Council to ignore the genocide.
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In the middle of May, it authorises an expanded mission of 5 ,500 peacekeepers.
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But the decision comes without troops, equipment or transport ready to deploy.
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And when a US advisor suggests jamming the extremist radio broadcasts,
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a lawyer in the Pentagon argues that it would violate the US constitutional principle of freedom of speech.
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The only real effort to stop the killing comes from inside Rwanda.
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Here, UN commander Romeo Dallaire has managed to keep thousands of Tutsi civilians alive with the few peacekeepers he has left.
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Among them is Captain Mbaye.
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On his own and with his jeep, he drives through the streets of Kigali to pick up Tutsi refugees still hiding in the city.
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Like many of his peacekeeping colleagues, Mbaye is unarmed.
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So to get past the many Hutu roadblocks in the city, he manages to talk his way through on charisma alone.
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In late May, on his way back from delivering messages from the Rwandan UN headquarters,
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Mbaye drives through a junction in central Kigali when a mortar shell lands beside the jeep.
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He's killed instantly.
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During the genocide, Mbaye and the rest of the UN peacekeepers are credited with saving an estimated 30 ,000 Rwandans.
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Around the middle of July, the Tutsi rebels managed to take Kigali.
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The Rwandan genocide is over.
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For the hundred days it lasted, more than 800 ,000 people were killed.
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Not once were the peacekeepers given the manpower, equipment or political backing they needed to protect the people in Rwanda.
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In the following years, world leaders who stood by and watched as the genocide happened come to Rwanda.
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in march of 1998 four years after the genocide president clinton
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too flies into kigali for the first time in his presidency during his stay in
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which he never leaves the airport he meets with survivors
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and officials and addresses the rwandan people and
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so i say to you though the road is hard
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and uncertain and there are many difficulties ahead there are things we can do
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and if we set about the business of doing them together you can't overcome the awful burden that you have endured.
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Thank you and God bless you.
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In his speech of more than 2 ,000 words, he acknowledges that the US failed to respond,
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but never offers an apology. And then he leaves.
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In his memoir, President Clinton would call the failure of intervening in the Rwandan genocide one of the greatest regrets of his presidency.
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similar expressions of regret would appear in several of the memoirs
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and biographies released by other world leaders in the years following the end of their careers
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but i would like to ask you about your feelings
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you're in your heart in your soul not in your brain
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when you see the piles of corpses
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you know strewn throughout rwanda coming down the rivers in the lakes how do you respond to
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that on an emotional level i will try not to be emotional let us recognize
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that it is a failure it is a failure not only for the united nations
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but it is a failure for the international community
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and all of us are responsible of this failure it is a genocide
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which has been committed unfortunately let us say with great humility
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i failed it is a scandal i'm the first one to say it and i'm ready to repeat it
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why nobody stopped the Rwandan genocide”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Tutsi, rwanda, Hutu, genocide, rwandan. This video has 115 sentences and 1501 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:02. The speaker talks at a steady 125 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| genocide noun | /ˈd͡ʒɛnəsaɪd/ | The systematic and deliberate destruction of a group of people; typically by killing substantial numbers of them, on the basis of their ethnicity, religion… |
| soldier noun | /ˈsoʊld͡ʒɚ/ | A member of a ground-based army, of any rank, but especially an enlisted member. |
| rebel noun | /ˈɹɛb.əl/ | A person who resists an established authority, often violently. |
| journalist noun | /ˈd͡ʒɝnəlɪst/ | The keeper of a personal journal, who writes in it regularly. |
| ethnic adjective | /ˈɛθ.nɪk/ | Of or relating to a group of people having common racial, ancestral, national, religious or cultural origins. |
| massacre noun | /ˈmæs.ə.kə(ɹ)/ | The killing of a considerable number (usually limited to people) where little or no resistance can be made, with indiscriminate violence, without necessity… |
| broadcast noun | /ˈbɹɔːd(ˌ)kɑːst/ | A transmission of a radio or television programme intended to be received by anyone with a receiver. |
| regret verb | /ɹɪˈɡɹɛt/ | To feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead. |
| shelter noun | /ˈʃɛltə/ | A place where a person or animal may find protection from the elements (especially rain, storms, or cold) sometimes as a place to sleep (such as a cave). |
| leaf noun | /lif/ | The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants. |
| depend verb | /dɪˈpɛnd/ | To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition |
| acknowledge verb | /əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/ | To admit the knowledge of; to recognize as a fact or truth; to declare one's belief in. |
| determination noun | /dɪˌtɜːmɪˈneɪʃən/ | The act, process, or result of any accurate measurement, as of length, volume, weight, intensity, etc. |
| presidency noun | /ˈpɹɛzɪdənsi/ | The office or role of president. |
| civilians noun | /sɪˈvɪl.jənz/ | Synonym of civvies |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| bring out verb | To elicit, evoke, or emphasize (a particular quality). |
| come down verb | To descend, fall down, collapse. |
| finish off verb | To finish completely. |
| get past verb | To continue around a blockage; to get around (something); to surpass something that is in the way. |
| move down verb | To demote |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| point out verb | To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body. |
| run out verb | To use up or consume all |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | They've been hiding · have been searching |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have surrounded · have been persecuted · have been saved |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | have been murdered · have been persecuted · was killed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 9 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, we're, aren't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: ethnic /ˈɛθ.nɪk/, withdraw /wɪðˈdɹɔ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shelter /ˈʃɛltə/, determination /dɪˌtɜːmɪˈneɪʃən/, shell /ʃɛl/, punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, constitutional /ˌkɒn.stɪˈtjuː.ʃ(ə)n.(ə)l/
- Long words — get the stress right: determination /dɪˌtɜːmɪˈneɪʃən/, presidency /ˈpɹɛzɪdənsi/, minority /maɪˈnɒɹ.ɪ.ti/, constitutional /ˌkɒn.stɪˈtjuː.ʃ(ə)n.(ə)l/, difficulty /ˈdɪfɪkəlti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like genocide, soldier, rebel.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.