Maven: Source Encoding in UTF-8 not working?

i am converting a project from Ant to Maven and i'm having problems with a specific unit test which deals with UTF-8 characters. The problem is about the following String:

String l_string = "ČäÁÓý\n€řЖжЦ\n№ЯФКЛ";

The problem is that the unit test fails, because the String is read as the following:

?äÁÓý
€????
?????

The java class is saved as UTF-8 and i also specify the build encoding to UTF-8 in the pom.xml.

Here is an excerpt of my pom.xml:

...

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>

...

<build>
<plugins>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.1</version>
        <configuration>
            <source>1.6</source>
            <target>1.6</target>
            <encoding>${project.build.sourceEncoding}</encoding>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.4</version>
        <configuration>
            <descriptorRefs>
                <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
            </descriptorRefs>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.15</version>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-surefire-report-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.15</version>
    </plugin>
 </plugins>
</build>

Am i