I think you've found a perl bug, if PerlIO::encoding is missing, open with encoding will fail with no indication this is the problem. You should submit a report :) 
#!/usr/bin/perl --
{
# you get no indication that the problem is that PerlIO/encoding.pm
# is missing, same when you rename PerlIO/encoding.pm
    $INC{'PerlIO/encoding.pm'}=__FILE__; 
    open my($in), '<:encoding(utf8)', __FILE__
      or die int($!)," $!\n",int($^E)," $^E ";
    close $in;
}

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In reply to Re: PAR will not play nice with opening encoding(utf8) by Anonymous Monk
in thread PAR will not play nice with opening encoding(utf8) by Anonymous Monk

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