Oplan Tokhang and Stories of Childhood: Children across Literature and (Trans)Media Places during the Duterte Regime in the Philippines

In the Philippines, children are one of the most vulnerable sectors disadvantaged by the past administration headed by former president Rodrigo Duterte. The Human Rights Watch reports that dozens of children have become victims of Oplan Tokhang, the president’s flagship program on the war against drugs since he claimed office in 2016 ( oplan is a slang for “plan” and tokhang is a play on Filipino words toktok or “knock” and hangyo or “plead”). This article seeks to explore the case of Filipino children and how they operate within literary, media, and socio-political dimensions. Selected works published during the Duterte regime, particularly those that tackle socio-political narratives, are presented. Afterward, the media representations of children in the news and on social media are discussed. The literary and media spaces provided for the concept of childhood are linked through Henry Jenkins’s concept of transmediality. By presenting storyworlds where children are at the center of navigation across narrative/nonnarrative media/nonmedia spaces, the meanings of childhood in the Philippines are unearthed from the transmedia place that these spaces create for the Filipino child.