\u is used for Unicode documents according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format#Character_encoding

\' is used for Windows1256 encoded, and no mention is made of Mac-encoded even tho' Word for Mac uses it.

Unicode::Escape fails because it seems to encode higher order characters differently than RTF editors do.

I don't care who is right, it's just not the same and so doesn't work, and of course this presents problems when I'm filling my templates with UTF8 data and trying to filter it. :(