This article explores how the war on drugs in Southeast Asia upholds the protection of the young as a key justification for extrajudicial killings carried out by the state. As many as 30,000 extrajudicial killings took place during Philippine former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs between 2016 and 2022, echoing a similar anti-drug campaign in Thailand in 2003, which saw around 3,000 people murdered. Drawing on political speeches, this article argues that Duterte and Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra deployed biopolitical patterns of discourse to legitimize the murder of those associated with the drug trade. Both leaders framed the threat of drugs to children through the biopolitical lens of the integrity of the family, national health, and therefore the future of the nation. Further, this article demonstrates how in the Philippine drug war, children were effectively denied their childhood status and presented as “dangerous becomings.” This reveals the contingent nature of childhood, as biopolitical criteria were also used to establish which children were perceived to be dangerous in the context of the drug war. In doing so, this paper serves to nuance and problematize how children are depicted in security studies, and international relations more broadly.

中文翻译：

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“如果你毁了我们的孩子，我就杀了你”：东南亚禁毒战争中的生物政治童年


本文探讨了东南亚的禁毒战争如何维护对年轻人的保护，并将其作为国家实施法外杀人的关键理由。菲律宾前总统罗德里戈·杜特尔特 （Rodrigo Duterte） 在 2016 年至 2022 年期间的禁毒战争期间发生了多达 30,000 起法外杀人事件，这与 2003 年泰国的类似反毒运动相呼应，当时约有 3,000 人被谋杀。本文借鉴政治演讲，认为杜特尔特和泰国总理他信·西那瓦 （Thaksin Shinawatra） 利用生物政治话语模式，将谋杀与毒品交易有关的人合法化。两位领导人都通过家庭完整性、国家健康以及国家未来的生物政治视角来构建毒品对儿童的威胁。此外，本文还展示了在菲律宾毒品战争中，儿童如何被有效地剥夺了他们的童年身份，并被描述为“危险的成长”。这揭示了童年的偶然性，因为生物政治标准也被用来确定哪些儿童在毒品战争的背景下被认为是危险的。在此过程中，本文有助于细微差别和问题化安全研究和更广泛的国际关系中如何描绘儿童。