I'm not sure how pragmas work in perlscript as opposed to normal perl, but perhaps a use utf8 would clue the perl interpereter into what you are trying to do?

Update Not that I think you're looking to go this far out of your way, but starting on page 276 of "Unicode: A Primer" by Tony Graham outlines unicode use in Perl (as of 5.005). I imagine the examples hold equally as well for Perl 5.6