enabling UTF-8 encoding for clojure source files-Collection of common programming errors

I’m working on a project which involves maven, java and clojure. The problem I’m facing is this, I have some UTF-8 chars in my clojure source files because of which my source code is not interpreted correctly by the java compiler, I kinda got it working by setting the environment variable JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=-Dfile.encoding=UTF8, but what I want is to pass this property through MAVEN.

I have already tried setting MAVEN_OPTS=-Dfile.encoding but this doesn’t seem to work.
I have also tried setting configuration for the compiler plugin of maven… something like this:

 
        -Dfile.encoding=UTF8
 

This doesn’t work either.

I’m I doing something wrong, or is there another way.

thanks,
RD

Ok, Here’s some more detail. This is my parent pom,

  
    org.apache.maven.plugins
    maven-compiler-plugin
    
      1.5
      1.5
      UTF-8 UTF8
    
  

Nothing interesting in the child’s pom except…

  
    src/main/clojure
  

;; clojure code snippet which causes problems

(let [char "?"]
   (not (empty? (filter #(s/contains? % char) )))
;; The list is always empty because I never find a match if I do not set the env. variable