The Indonesian judiciary has a poor reputation for delivering justice, and Thursday’s verdict in a travesty of a trial was further proof of just how far from a fair and transparent ideal we stand today.

A court in Jakarta sentenced Neil Bantleman, a Canadian teacher at the Jakarta Intercultural School (previously the Jakarta International School), and teaching assistant Ferdinand Tjiong, an Indonesian, to 10 years in prison each for the alleged sexual abuse of three boys in the school’s kindergarten campus.

The US Embassy, a founding embassy of the school, cited “serious questions […] regarding the investigative process and lack of credible evidence against the teachers,” and said it was “deeply disappointed with this outcome.”

Indeed, anyone in the international community who witnessed this witch hunt play out since last year will be appalled and disgusted at the way the authorities handled the case. The results of medical tests by specialists in Singapore were deemed inadmissible as evidence, for instance, on the grounds that the reports submitted to the court were copies and not the original. The judges also bizarrely took the letters written to the court in support of Bantleman and Tjiong as evidence of their guilt.

The judges also barred Canadian consular officials from the courtroom, in a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention.

No one wins in a case like this. Justice has not been served when the judges abrogate their duties and side with xenophobic hysteria at the expense of reason and fairness.

The only silver lining to this whole mess is that Bantleman and Tjiong still have the appeals process to turn to, where we hope, for the sake of justice, they are exonerated of all charges.