diff --git a/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/java/sonia/scm/repository/AbstractHgHandler.java b/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/java/sonia/scm/repository/AbstractHgHandler.java
index 3ba8c53a57..a24b1ad134 100644
--- a/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/java/sonia/scm/repository/AbstractHgHandler.java
+++ b/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/java/sonia/scm/repository/AbstractHgHandler.java
@@ -95,7 +95,16 @@ public class AbstractHgHandler
 
   /** Field description */
   public static final String ENV_REVISION_START = "SCM_REVISION_START";
+  
+  /** Field description */
+  public static final String ENV_PYTHONIOENCODING = "PYTHONIOENCODING";
+  
+  /** Field description */
+  public static final String ENV_HGENCODING = "HGENCODING";
 
+  /** Field description */
+  public static final String ENCODING = "UTF-8";
+  
   /** the logger for AbstractHgHandler */
   private static final Logger logger =
     LoggerFactory.getLogger(AbstractHgHandler.class);
@@ -431,6 +440,10 @@ public class AbstractHgHandler
     pb.directory(directory);
 
     Map<String, String> env = pb.environment();
+    
+    // force utf-8 encoding for mercurial and python
+    env.put(ENV_PYTHONIOENCODING, ENCODING);
+    env.put(ENV_HGENCODING, ENCODING);
 
     if (context.isSystemEnvironment())
     {
diff --git a/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/resources/sonia/scm/hglog.py b/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/resources/sonia/scm/hglog.py
index 638dab82f1..c405309b81 100644
--- a/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/resources/sonia/scm/hglog.py
+++ b/scm-plugins/scm-hg-plugin/src/main/resources/sonia/scm/hglog.py
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ def openRepository():
 
 def writeXml(doc):
   # print doc.toprettyxml(indent="  ")
-  print doc.toxml()
+  doc.writexml(sys.stdout, encoding='UTF-8')
 
 def createChildNode(doc, parentNode, name):
   node = doc.createElement(name)