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The number Venezuelans granted political asylum by the United States increased 400 percent between 1999 and 2004, the newspaper El Nuevo Herald reported Friday. Venezuelan political asylum petitions rose from 18 in 1999, the first year Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was in office, to 1,408 in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, according to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Applications climbed from 18 in 1999 to 39 in 2000, 96 in 2001, 261 in 2002 and 899 in 2003 to 1,408 in 2004. Of 2,721 asylum applications filed between 1999 and 2004, the United States approved 886 and denied 79, with the remaining ones still unresolved. Following a failed referendum to revoke Chavez's mandate and regional elections, 234 Venezuelan asylum applications were filed in October and November 2004, almost the same as the total number filed in all of fiscal year 2001-2002. "The main reason Venezuelans leave our country is that human rights are systematically violated there," George Washington University Professor Robert Carmona-Borjas, who was granted asylum in 2002, told El Nuevo Herald. An immigration attorney consulted by the newspaper said some of the Venezuelan applicants had been physically attacked or threatened with physical attack in their country. [more