Daren campaigns to free hostages and the unjustly detained around the world. He also helps organisations with their security, privacy and business continuity.
Daren’s origin story…
Daren was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His parents were also born in Malaysia and all four of his grandparents moved from India to Malaysia during Britain’s colonial rule of both countries. Even though Daren was a third generation Malaysian, he still had less freedoms than the majority of the population - a common injustice faced by Malaysians of Indian and Chinese ethnicity. At an early age, Daren and his parents moved to London, England seeking a better life and better opportunities. They settled in the London Borough of Newham, a community with many Asian immigrants, one that reminded them of home. When Daren started school in England and experiencing British culture, he learned about the freedoms he should have had since birth - the freedoms we should all have. A few years later, Daren moved to the United States briefly where he got to go to primary school in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Just like the British, Americans too cherished their freedoms. Now knowing what he was missing growing up in Malaysia, Daren promised himself he would stand up for human rights.
Unfortunately, Daren’s parents separated when he was 10 and he had to move back to Malaysia. This was the mid-90s - Malaysian news outlets were censored, the same political party ruled the country for decades, the Prime Minister was anti-Semitic, homophobic and disliked the West. Speaking up for human rights and calling out injustice was dangerous. Daren was told in school to be “grateful” and his Malaysian family members told him the same thing they told themselves and their children - “this is how things are, just mind your own business and you’ll be fine”. So that’s what he did - he played the part and promised himself that he would move back to Britain or the United States one day.
Daren celebrating his 6th birthday at school in East London with his teachers and classmates
Having lived and gone to school in England and America, Daren stood out. He was different, he thought differently and he looked different too. People especially teenagers fear what they don’t understand. Daren was bullied by other students and sometimes by his teachers too. Funnily enough, Daren had a growth spurt when he was a teenager and became 6 feet 1 inches tall. The bullying stopped. There were some downsides though. Being Indian and six feet tall in Malaysia meant the security guards in shopping malls followed you around, you were “randomly” selected for checks when boarding flights and you were frequently perceived as a threat and had to go out of your way to come across as non-threatening. Daren’s go-to move was to be funny. This was when Daren knew he had to learn to keep himself safe and improve his situational awareness - things that would serve him well later in life working as a security consultant.
Life in Malaysia wasn’t all bad just as life in England and America wasn’t all good. We do the best with the cards we’re dealt. We focus on what we have in common and Daren did the same. Daren was active in martial arts and the Scouts. Having grown up in both the East and West, Daren was familiar with many cultures and learned to get along with people from all walks of life from all around the world. In England, Daren would watch CBeebies, Top of the Pops and EastEnders after school and celebrate watching Manchester United beat their opponents with friends and family. In Malaysia, Daren would watch Hong Kong Cantonese sitcoms with Malay subtitles, Charles in Charge and Happy Days after school and stay up till 3 am on weekends to watch Manchester United dominate English football so he could talk to his classmates and friends about it first thing the next school day. Almost 40% of Malaysia’s population at the time was Chinese and Indian. They all faced the same injustice, many had dreams of a better life just like Daren even though not many had the means to migrate to another country. Many got along reasonably well with each other as they had a common struggle.
After knocking his A-Levels out of the ballpark, Daren moved back to Britain to do his Bachelors degree at the University of Nottingham. He did his Masters right after and five years later, became a naturalised British citizen. Having grown up knowing first hand the importance of personal freedoms and also believing that the most powerful office in government is the office of citizen - Daren joined Amnesty International and the Labour Party shortly after becoming a British citizen.
Daren now works as a security consultant and campaigns to free hostages and the unjustly detained around the world.
Becoming a security consultant…
Daren graduated from the University of Nottingham in England with a Bachelors degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering and a Masters in Information Technology. For his Masters dissertation, Daren developed a security app. Since he was a child, Daren wanted to grow up to become someone who helped protect people, someone who kept people safe. In 2007, Daren started his career in London working as a security consultant for Big 4 consulting firms, KPMG and Deloitte as well as American telecommunications giant, Verizon. Daren has been deployed to 23 countries where he performed information security, physical security, privacy and business continuity assessments on organisations in multiple industries to identify weaknesses in their defences.
Daren helps organisations protect what truly matters to them by building and managing their security, privacy and business continuity processes. He has received multiple awards for the quality of his work from KPMG and Verizon. Daren has provided pro bono assistance on cyber security to NGOs including the British Red Cross and Amnesty International. He has also helped hostage families with their security.
To this day, Daren continues to help organisations as a security consultant.
Becoming a campaigner for hostages and the unjustly detained…
Daren became a security consultant to help people and after almost a decade helping organisations make sure their employees and customers were safer and their information was more secure - Daren decided to do more.
Daren looked back at his career to date and realised that the most fulfilling work he did was teaching the next generation of security auditors and the pro bono work he did for NGOs. This was when Daren decided to join Amnesty International UK and become an activist in his spare time.
Daren got involved in many different Amnesty campaigns and the ones that resonated with him the most were the people unjustly imprisoned abroad. Their loved ones were working tirelessly to free them and reunite their families. These people needed backup. They needed good caring people from all walks of life to come together and help. Daren raised his hand and stepped forward.
Vigil for British grandfather, Kamal Foroughi wrongfully imprisoned in Iran on his 78th birthday outside the Iranian Embassy in London, UK
The first person Daren campaigned to free was a British grandfather by the name of Kamal Foroughi. To this day, he holds the record for being the longest wrongfully imprisoned British citizen in Iran. Kamal, a former consultant with oil and gas company, Petronas, was arrested while visiting Iran on 5 May 2011. Daren started small and campaigned by raising awareness of Kamal’s case on social media, he shared petitions to free Kamal and wrote to his MP calling on the UK government to secure his release. Daren attended an event for Kamal at the Amnesty International UK office in London in 2016 where he met the family of another British citizen wrongfully imprisoned in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Daren had been campaigning to free Nazanin too and both Kamal and Nazanin’s families were working together to bring their loved ones home. Daren got to know the families well and campaigned closely with them.
Vigil for British hostage in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe outside the Iranian Embassy in London on 17 January 2017
Daren joined his local Amnesty volunteer group in Tower Hamlets, London where he eventually became the Chair and Communications Officer. Daren had 1-2-1 meetings with UK Members of Parliament where he persuaded them to publicly call on the UK government to secure Kamal and Nazanin’s release. As Daren started to become well-known for his advocacy, other families from around the world with loved ones held in Iran started to get in touch with Daren. The people were different, the countries they were from were different but the Iranian regime playbook was the same. They were arrested on false charges, denied access to legal counsel, consular access and medication, placed in solitary confinement, some were coerced into giving false confessions, put through sham trials and sentenced to years in prison for a crime they did not commit. This was when a pattern started to emerge - a pattern of state-sponsored hostage-taking by Iran we now call “hostage diplomacy”. The conversation then shifted from Nazanin and Kamal as one-off cases to Iran’s hostage diplomacy and the inability of governments including the UK to protect their citizens abroad.
UK Members of Parliament Daren lobbied: Sir Stephen Timms, Lyn Brown, Jim Fitzpatrick and Rushanara Ali. All MPs represented constituencies in East London.
Daren became well-known for his campaigning among Amnesty staff, activists and supporters. In 2018, he was elected by the Amnesty membership to Amnesty UK’s Board of Directors. This position gave Daren a bigger platform to campaign. He started to write articles in national and local newspapers including The Independent. His Twitter posts were being quoted by news outlets from around the world and were being shared by Hollywood celebrities. Families with loved ones held hostage or wrongfully imprisoned around the world started to get in touch with Daren. Some of these were cases that were not public. Daren would provide them with guidance, help them with campaign approaches and press releases. He would also put them in touch with journalists from around the world, other hostage families going through similar ordeals and NGOs like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Frustratingly, Amnesty was not interested in taking on cases of Americans wrongfully imprisoned in Russia or Venezuela. Daren had been in contact with these families and was feeling guilty. He wanted to help them and had no intention of giving up. In 2021, Daren left Amnesty to create and host Pod Hostage Diplomacy, a podcast that works to free hostages and the unjustly detained around the world. Together with their families, Daren shares their stories and lets the public know how they can help.
Pod Hostage Diplomacy logo
Daren noticed that hostage families struggled to get the media attention they needed so he created Pod Hostage Diplomacy which is a safe space for them to speak as long as they need to about their loved ones and what needs to be done to bring them home. To date, Pod Hostage Diplomacy has been listened to in 87 countries and territories. Listeners include the US National Security Council, US State Department, diplomats, journalists, activists and most importantly - other hostage families. Daren’s work on hostage diplomacy has been cited in reports published by the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the Australian Parliament’s Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee. Anyone interested can listen to Pod Hostage Diplomacy wherever they get their podcasts, on the Pod Hostage Diplomacy website or on YouTube.
Pod Hostage Diplomacy introduction video