On a recent Sunday, the Rev. Mutima Peter of Westbrook sat in silence in church watching a video. At times, he had to bow his head.

He was watching a documentary video shot the day after a massacre at the Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi, Africa, in which attackers, armed with automatic weapons, machetes, grenades and torches, lit a ring of fire around around the camp and beat drums as they slaughtered 163 people. Peter watched the video with a crowd of about 60 people on Aug. 14 – a year and a day after the attack – at the International Christian Fellowship Church in Portland, where he is the pastor.

Peter, who was on a peace mission at the time of the attack, went to the camp a few hours after it happened. Still, a year later, he struggled to watch the video.

“It was hard for me to see it,” said Peter, who is from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Peter, a Tutsi, lost several family members in the attack. When the massacre occurred, he was in Central Africa in an effort to reconcile warring tribal factions. The region has been plagued by tribal warfare between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes for hundreds of years. Genocide in Rwanda in 1994 took a million lives and the violence reignited last year.

Claude Rwaganje of Portland, who accompanied Peter on a return to their homeland this year, said many of the survivors of the massacre remain hospitalized.

“I saw them myself three weeks ago,” he said. “This video is a shock.”

Most of those attending the commemoration wore purple scarves in sympathy for the families who lost loved ones. Rwaganje asked for a moment of silence “to remember the innocent people who were killed in the Gatumba massacre.”

Rwaganje, who organized the observance here, said the remembrance was not for a tribal cause. “It’s for humanity,” he said. “We pray for peace.”

In an interview last year, Rwaganje said armed Burundi soldiers guarding the refugee camp fled just before the attack. He also said no protective action had been taken by Burundi or the United Nations despite the distribution of leaflets threatening an attack.

While most of the people at the commemoration were African immigrants and refugees, some local people joined them to remember the attack.

“I just wanted to be with these people,” said Sandra Hamlin of Gorham.

Hamlin blames the United Nations for failing to protect the refugees. “The U.N. looked on while these people were massacred,” she said.

In a statement released on the anniversary of the attacks, the United Nations said its investigation of the massacre found that the National Forces for Liberation (FNL), which claimed responsibility for the atrocity, could not have been solely responsible.

“The search for those responsible for the massacres continues,” said the U.N. operations in Burundi. “In the name of the victims and as part of the effort to end impunity for the killings and massacres that have plagued this region for too many years, we urge the government of Burundi to complete its investigation, issue the report of its findings and bring those responsible to justice.”

Many of those attending the commemoration lost family in the attack. Hamlin, who attended the first session of the two-day observance at Portland’s Allen Avenue Unitarian Church, went to the International Christian Fellowship Church for the prayer and music service.

Mary Windsor of Atlanta, Ga., attended after hearing on Wednesday about the observance. She and her husband, Dr. Rudolph Windsor, have founded Global Watch Inc., a humanitarian non-profit group.

She said the group’s goal is to eradicate human rights violations and genocide through education, spirituality and enlightenment. “We’re determined that this never happens again,” she said about the massacre.