diff --git a/org.eclipse.jgit.pgm/src/org/eclipse/jgit/pgm/Main.java b/org.eclipse.jgit.pgm/src/org/eclipse/jgit/pgm/Main.java
index 3addecb2f..a9f428e02 100644
--- a/org.eclipse.jgit.pgm/src/org/eclipse/jgit/pgm/Main.java
+++ b/org.eclipse.jgit.pgm/src/org/eclipse/jgit/pgm/Main.java
@@ -44,8 +44,11 @@
 
 package org.eclipse.jgit.pgm;
 
+import static java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets.UTF_8;
+
 import java.io.File;
 import java.io.IOException;
+import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
 import java.io.PrintWriter;
 import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
 import java.net.MalformedURLException;
@@ -192,7 +195,7 @@ protected void run(final String[] argv) throws Exception {
 	}
 
 	PrintWriter createErrorWriter() {
-		return new PrintWriter(System.err);
+		return new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(System.err, UTF_8));
 	}
 
 	private void execute(final String[] argv) throws Exception {