year, Equal Rights also observed our Muslim clients’ concerns over fasting in detention, without autonomy over their meals and mealtimes. Meanwhile, Florence reported that the food provided was high in salt, and therefore poorly suited to her high blood pressure. We have thus found that detained persons’ dietary requirements are not always accommodated, and they have often expressed that they feel too disempowered to assert these requirements to ensure they are met. Lastly, six participants mentioned their reliance on supplementary food from the PRDC supermarket – a truck that visits the PRDC on a weekly basis. Rashid explained: “If we don’t buy things from the supermarket, we would be starving, because the food is just really bad…So we spend most of the time eating cheese, tuna, just the things we can buy from the supermarket, and chips”. Afran agrees: “If you’re not able to buy things from the market you’ll be starving because the food is really bad and you can’t really eat it”. However, not all participants could afford to purchase additional food and many clients of Equal Rights have complained that the market’s prices are far higher than average costs. Emmanuel told us: “We don’t work here, we don’t have money here. Some people buy condiments to mix into their food, but if you don’t have money then you can’t do that”. Meanwhile, Louis stated: “I didn’t have anyone else I could call to give me something if I didn’t want to eat something. I had to eat everything”. Not all detainees, then, have access to supplementary food, and are therefore reliant on whatever they are provided. 4. No recreational activities Each of the nine participants interviewed on the subject reported that they had no access to recreational activities in detention. Most reported that they spent their time sleeping or browsing the internet on their phones. Joud, Ismail, and Haroun each told us they would sleep during the day and wake during the night. Ismail stated: I usually wake up at 7pm and start my day. I used to play games on the phone, or trying to learn something useful, spending some time to learn German language or anything that could be useful for me. Meanwhile, Haroun explained that awaking during the night was the only way he could get some privacy. Florence informed us that she used the last of her money to pay for internet on her phone so that she could read the news and study the Bible. Faiza noted that she preferred to spend most of her time in her room, talking to her husband and family, as spending too much time with her neighbours in detention was hard on her mental health, stating: “Once I get outside people were really depressed and shower me with negativity and saying that I will stay for a long time so I’d rather stay in the room and talk with my family and my husband”. Some participants reported that they sometimes devised their own recreational activities: Boubacar explained that some of his friends played football outside, while Joud told us he would sometimes go for fast walks around the complex to keep healthy. Haroun, who did not have a phone in his first months in detention, told us that he spent most of his time walking outside his container, as he felt like he could not breathe while he was inside. Faiza, however, noted that there was not much space to move outside, estimating that there were only 35-50 metres of free space in the two sections in which she was placed, which was crowded with people. She stated: “There’s not enough space to make exercises or anything”. However, all participants confirmed that no recreational activities were organised by the authorities, and that they were responsible for filling their time with the limited resources available. Zain explained: “Most of the time we spend on our phones. There’s nothing else you can do actually, they can make a place for people to fix things, electronical or stitching or something but there’s nothing”. In some cases, this sense of inertia caused participants evident distress: Boubacar explained: “I don’t have the words frankly, to explain how I pass the days here”. In other cases, detained persons were too distressed to design their own activities. Faiza stated: “I’m supposed to learn the language but because I was so depressed I didn’t even try. I was thinking to learn English or German”. We have thus found that the lack of recreational activities and resources in the PRDC is harmful to detained persons who spend long periods in detention with very few means of passing the time. 49 DETENTION OF MIGRANTS ON THE ISLAND OF KOS