Bektiati refused to continue writing, joined other Tempo colleagues in a legal challenge to the government's ban, and helped found the Alliance of Independent Journalists in Indonesia.
[2] Unable to find work, Bektiati left Indonesia for Australia in 1995, writing as a correspondent for a newspaper based in East Java.
[3] She then joined Detektif Dan Romantika (D&R), a weekly news magazine, edited by a former Tempo writer.
[1] After President Habibie's new government relaxed media censorship, Tempo was re-established and Bektiati resumed writing for it.
[1] In 2015 she co-edited Letters from Foreign Lands, an anthology of personal accounts by diasporic Indonesians.