A/HRC/12/34/Add.2 page 11 harassment, intimidation and threats from large estate owners, sometimes in collusion with local authorities.6 To its credit, the Brazilian justice system has investigated and prosecuted many of these cases, but apparently impunity persists in several others and the threat of further confrontation and violence remains. 33. Opponents of the demarcation of the Raposa Serra do Sol territory, supported by the State of Roraima, sought an injunction against the removal of the rice farmers and challenged the demarcation and recognition of the Raposa Serra do Sol territory as a contiguous whole. Several rice farmers who stood to be removed from the area joined in the legal challenge to the demarcation. They and the state argued that the demarcation of such a large territory was not only without constitutional grounding, but that it also affronted economic development objectives that in their view are protected by the Constitution. Brazilian military officials weighed in publicly with pronouncements of concern that a quasi-autonomous indigenous territory running along a lengthy section of Brazil’s border with Venezuela and Guyana would have implications for national security, perpetuating a broader concern about indigenous peoples’ rights as being a threat to national sovereignty. Indigenous peoples and organizations, especially the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR), intervened to back the Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous communities to oppose the challenge to the demarcation of the territory, with strategies that reached into the international arena, in an increasingly polarized political environment. 34. By the time the case reached the Federal Supreme Tribunal, its potential implications for the future of indigenous peoples’ rights in Brazil, especially to lands, had acquired major proportions. The case represented the clash of two opposing visions of development and the place of indigenous peoples in relation to it: one which sees indigenous peoples in possession of the territories of their traditional use and occupancy, and another which sees those territories opened up to economic development by market forces, with indigenous peoples relegated to small parcels of land. 35. After a lengthy process, the Federal Supreme Tribunal reached a final decision in the case on 19 March 2009, with a majority of the 11 justices (ministros) voting to uphold Raposa Serra do Sol demarcated land as a contiguous territory.7 In this respect, the court’s decision was undoubtedly a victory for the indigenous communities of the territory and of the country, confirming the essential legality of the demarcation model that has been replicated throughout the Amazon region and other parts of Brazil (see paragraphs 41-45), and rejecting the view that that model threatens the development or security of the Brazilian State. But while upholding the demarcation of the Raposa territory and ordering the removal of the non-indigenous rice farmers, the court pronounced an array of conditions, many of them limiting, on the land rights it was confirming and on the constitutional protections for indigenous lands more generally (see paragraph 38). 6 A/HRC/4/37/Add.2, paras.18-20 and 68. 7 Federal Supreme Tribunal, decision on Petition 3388, 18-19 March 2009.