By LIBBY MIDDLEBROOK
Prime Minister Helen Clark was forced to squash through a group of angry students yesterday.
At Auckland University, groups Fightback and S11 Solidarity surrounded the Prime Minister, demanding a boycott of the World Economic Forum on September 11 in Australia, due to be attended by Finance Minister Michael Cullen.
The 12 protesters also made claims that the Government was "starving students" after failing to restore unemployment benefits for them over summer.
Helen Clark was at the university to give a speech on the arts, and she smiled thinly as she struggled through the small crowd helped by security officers.
The students were not ignored, however, as the Prime Minister accepted an anti-capitalism brochure.
A member of both S11 and Fightback, student Natasha Francois, said that the Labour Party was there to support workers, not the rich businessmen attending the World Economic Forum.
"We're here to say don't send Cullen. It's an undemocratic organisation that only represents the elite."
She said that the Labour-Alliance Government had also failed students by not supporting MP Sue Bradford's bill to reinstate the unemployment benefit for students over the summer holidays.
"That's not what we expect from a political party from the left."
Security guards prevented the protesters from following Helen Clark into university buildings, and remained to escort her when she emerged an hour later.
The protest group waved banners, chanted and surrounded the ministerial cars.
Students confront PM over World Economic Forum
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