Thousands of Indonesians left homeless by the tsunami will be able to move into newly-finished barracks next week, but despite the promise of shelter, food and water, many instead want to return to the windswept piles of rubble they once called home.

At Lambaro, eight kilometres inland from the ravaged shoreline of Aceh province, the last nails were being hammered home on a series of cramped, wooden structures designed to house families for more than a year.

Across the region, similar provisions were being made to accommodate about one quarter of the 400,000 people whose homes were destroyed when the waves rolled in, killing more than 240,000 Indonesians.

But at the same time, planks were also being nailed into place on the coast, half an hour's drive from the main city of Banda Aceh, to finish the only structure standing for miles – a wooden mosque.

"This is our land, it has been our land for years, handed down from generation to generation," said Subki Basyah, the chief of Meunasah Tuha, the once prosperous fishing village on whose ruins the makeshift mosque now stands. "It is very important we stay here, not in some government barracks miles from the sea," he told AFP.

Like many of those who lived through the disaster, Basyah and his villagers fear that authorities will use the barrack relocation centres as a means of controlling people and dispossessing them of their ancestral land.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch group has warned that the government, which has a history of abuses committed during conflict to crush separatists in Aceh, could misuse the camps, particularly if the military becomes embroiled.

It said people may be railroaded into the barracks from their current shelter in tented refugee camps without being given a chance to explore other alternatives.

The government meanwhile has also said it would not let people rebuild their homes close to the shoreline, to prevent a repeat of the carnage in the event of another natural disaster.

For communities such as Meunasah Tuha, there is a fear that they will be relocated so far inland they will no longer have good access to their livelihood, the tuna-rich fishing grounds of the Indian Ocean.

"If the government cares about us so much, why didn't they build something to protect us in the first place," said Basyah. "They should be helping us rebuild our homes now, instead of building the barracks," he said.

For the people of Meunasah Tuha, which lost all but 228 of a population of 1,400, the task of rebuilding their community will be a lengthy and expensive project. Their rickety mosque is only a tiny step forward.

"I have nothing and no one left, this land and this community is all," said Sa'dah, a 48-year-old woman, gesturing to a small clearing in the debris where she has planted rows of pea plants.

Sa'dah lost her husband, mother, three children and 10 sisters in the December 26 disaster. She survived because she was away picking coconuts in an area with quick access to higher ground.

"If the government does not let us rebuild here, then we will ask again, then again, then again. After that, I think we will no longer have the strength to fight." Joel Boutroue, the deputy coordinator in Aceh for the United Nations, which is helping the Indonesian government set up the barracks, defended the camps saying that they took priority over helping people to rebuild their homes.

"Unfortunately, life is never simple, so we can only give one thing at a time," he said.

But he rejected accusations that the camps would be used to indiscriminately move people around the region. "If these people want to go there, they go there, if they want to leave, they leave and as far as I know, the government his committed to that," he said, adding that no-one had yet been coerced into entering the camps.

Nainunis, a religious teacher from the coastal village of Klieng Cot Aron, northeast of Banda Aceh, said survivors would rather remain under canvas with people they know, rather than in barracks with strangers.

"Though our village was destroyed, we still feel at home there. It is better to be there rather than among another community which still has its children, and doesn't understand our tears or even our jokes," said the 35-year-old, who saw all almost of his 200 students washed away as he clung to a palm tree.