Marianne Kearney, Madura – There seems to be no safe haven for the thousands of Madurese refugees who are fleeing the brutal ethnic violence in Central Kalimantan.

Those who have returned to rural Madura in the hope of finding solace and refuge with their kinsmen face increasing problems of overcrowding and poverty.

Overnight, small villages in Madura have doubled in size. Almost every family in the village of Lempong has opened their doors to Madurese refugees, whether or not they are related.

The vast majority of refugees fleeing the violence in Sampit and Samuda originally came from this part of western Madura, the most arid and infertile part of the island.

But it was this infertility that led the Madurese out of their homeland in the first place, said villager Abdullah Salam. Now this village – where 80 per cent of the inhabitants are poor, and water supply is scarce – must feed and house the refugees.

With none of the promised aid having arrived from Surabaya, Mr Abdullah predicts the village can only support the visitors for a month or two.

He says the tension of supplying food for so many refugees coupled with competition for limited work will spark new conflicts between the Madurese migrants and the residents in Lempong.

Already this week, two suspected Dayaks, accompanying their Madurese wives back to Madura, were brutally murdered, showing just how easily mass violence can be ignited. "They've already run here to escape conflict, if there's a new conflict here, where do they go next?" he asked.

Even local Madurese leaders, such as Mr Mohammad Noer, the much respected former governor of Surabaya who is sympathetic to the refugees' plight, is talking of unrest and violence if the refugees remain in Madura for any length of time.

He, like other local Madurese leaders, is hoping that the refugees would be returned quickly to Kalimantan. But reconciliation is a process that Jakarta may be considering. Not Sampit, according to authorities.

Inadequate government funding to rebuild destroyed shops and homes adds to the problems. Many of the migrants' own valuables, such as cars, have already been sold to the police for a fraction of their value.

Reconciliation would be a slow process if the experiences of Madurese migrants and past ethnic conflicts in areas such as Maluku are anything to go by.

For instance, many of the Madurese migrants from Sampit say they have no Dayak friends and have minimal contact with Dayaks because the latter were "stupid" or non-Muslim.

Dayaks in Palangkaraya and Sampit have shown themselves as unprepared for reconciliation. They burnt vehicles and rioted when the issue of returning the Madurese was publicly raised.

In the case of North Maluku, it has taken almost 18 months before 90,000 Muslims, pushed from their homes on the island of Halmahera, can even begin to return.

Aid groups say the lack of government co-ordination and simmering religious tensions have retarded the process. Even now, despite government assurances, only a handful have returned due to lack of community infrastructure.