March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected a move to change the borders of an Amazon Indian reservation half the size of Belgium in a ruling that strengthens the protection of native people’s rights to the land.

Ten of 11 justices, including Supreme Court President Gilmar Mendes, voted in favor of maintaining the borders of the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve in the northern state of Roraima, according to a statement on the court’s Web site.

“The basis we established in this case, the conditions and procedures, will serve as a guide for other disputes,” Mendes told journalists in Brasilia after today’s vote. “We are putting an end to the issues surrounding similar cases.”

Authorities in Roraima, which borders Venezuela and Guayana, and farmers who’ve worked on land inside the reserve since the early 1990s, brought the case in April 2005. They claimed the process that created the reserve was unconstitutional.

In their votes, the justices turned down the request to break up the reservation into separated islands to allow farmers to continue working the land in existing farms.

Farmers must vacate the land immediately, the court ruled. Federal Police sent 500 officers to the reservation to guarantee security, according to a police spokeswoman in Brasilia.

One justice voted to have the process that created the Indian reservation annulled, arguing there were mistakes in an anthropological report used to validate the area as Indian land.

The case was a test for Indibrasilian rights in Brazil and for the country’s 488 reservations that make up 12 percent of national territory, said Carlos Ayres Britto, the lead justice on the matter.

One hundred and twenty-three indigenous lands are in the process of being identified, according to Brazil’s National Indian Foundation.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adriana Brasileiro in Rio de Janeiro at abrasileiro@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 19, 2009 21:12 EDT