diff --git a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/utils/markup.py b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/utils/markup.py
index 756a4132f..5ec5b1719 100644
--- a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/utils/markup.py
+++ b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/utils/markup.py
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ def replace_tags(text, token=''):
 
 def remove_comments(text):
     """ Remove HTML Comments. """
-    return re.sub('<!--.*?-->', '', text.decode('utf-8'), re.DOTALL)
+    return re.sub('<!--.*?-->', u'', text.decode('utf-8'), re.DOTALL)
       
 def remove_tags(text, which_ones=()):
     """ Remove HTML Tags only. 
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ def remove_tags(text, which_ones=()):
     else:
         reg_exp_remove_tags = '<.*?>'
     re_tags = re.compile(reg_exp_remove_tags, re.DOTALL)
-    return re_tags.sub('', text.decode('utf-8'))
+    return re_tags.sub(u'', text.decode('utf-8'))
 
 def remove_tags_with_content(text, which_ones=()):
     """ Remove tags and its content.
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ def remove_tags_with_content(text, which_ones=()):
     """
     tags = [ '<%s.*?</%s>' % (tag,tag) for tag in which_ones ]
     re_tags_remove = re.compile('|'.join(tags), re.DOTALL)
-    return re_tags_remove.sub('', text.decode('utf-8'))
+    return re_tags_remove.sub(u'', text.decode('utf-8'))
 
 def remove_escape_chars(text, which_ones=('\n','\t','\r')):
     """ Remove escape chars. Default : \\n, \\t, \\r
@@ -96,5 +96,5 @@ def remove_escape_chars(text, which_ones=('\n','\t','\r')):
                       By default removes \n, \t, \r.
     """
     re_escape_chars = re.compile('[%s]' % ''.join(which_ones))
-    return re_escape_chars.sub('', text.decode('utf-8'))
+    return re_escape_chars.sub(u'', text.decode('utf-8'))