Wellawaya Police Station

The JVP uprising of 1971 began with the attack of this police station at 5.30am on April 5th 1971. The island-wide, simultaneous attacks were to be at 5.30pm, rather than 5.30am, thus alerting the defence forces to impending attacks.

Though police forces remained alert, 73 stations were attacked later in the day with several being overrun and the entire southern region of the island falling into the hands of the JVP. Battles raged for three weeks but Colombo could not be captured resulting in their movement being forced to go underground.